Actually I'm pretty down even though I'm kidding around. I need some more help with GAL. I do quite a bit of stuff but I feel it's not enough for me and I am getting tearful on and off.
Some days I'm fine but other days not. To give people more of an idea of my lifestyle, I run a voluntary organisation where I produce a newsletter 3 to 4 times yearly. This amounts to several days hard work, once every 3 or 4 months.
I also run a helpline all the time. In busy times I have 6 to 7 calls a day. If there is a 'scare' on the TV or I have been advertised, I have had up to 50 messages daily. In quiet times it's only 1 or 2 calls a day and some days none. It's the quiet times which are worse as I have less to distract me.
As well as this I also sell books via the internet and sometimes on stalls and I do banking 1 to 2 times a month, tax return once a year, book keeping on a weekly basis (only takes 20 minutes a time). All of this I don't make a profit on, just make enough to keep the organisation running - although I do profit from titles I wrote. In quiet times it only amounts to 10 or 12 hours a week - extra if I have interviews with people.
I write articles for magazines, just as and when. Some months I write several, and some months not any. Any work I do for this is in the evenings.
When writing my books, I do this when Andy has DD4 for the weekend and I write the whole weekend she is gone. Once titles are finished, I do some publicity etc but again, this is always just a few hours here and there after DD4 has gone to bed.
Once they start selling I don't have to physically do much work, I just wait to get paid, which is quarterly.
So I hope you're getting that it's not 9 to 5 work, not regular, apart from banking and posting orders, I don't have to leave the house so I don't meet others like you would in an office. The only times I meet people is when someone wants to interview me or in the summer when I run book stalls.
It still leaves free hours so I go to a Steiner group with DD4 on Tuesday mornings, I take her to a state toddler group on Wednesdays, Dance class on Thursdays. I go to ocassional computer classes when I can get a babysitter, I go grocery shopping and always treat myself to a cream tea in the cafe every week, once every 2 months I go to a spiritual group (can't get there anymore often because of the expense). I work with the writer's college of journalism and write articles for them from home. Doing the coursework takes up some time.
I was an egg donor (took up loads of time going to clinic) but not anymore, it's over.
I spend 3 hours a week taking my DD to nursery school and back.
My best friend I visit once a week; my other friend I used to visit once a week but don't anymore since her bf moved in and she got a job in a care home. I see her once a month if I'm lucky.
I have no other friends and no other family aside from Andy and my girls, and you all know that situation.
I have a holiday planned, and several days out in the next few weeks. I am spending Christmas Day with my family this year for the first time since we split (planning on opening my sofa out flat and putting a tablecloth over it to make it into a huge table - the only way I can feed all those people in this tiny house!).
So you know it's not as if I don't have a life, but it's not enough. I'm bored, I'm lonely, I'm upset.
I've tried dating agencies but they are just full of creeps who want to have cyber sex with me.
