Yes, I’ve been playing the new Pokemon TCG Pocket app. Yes, it’s more fun than I thought it was going to be. Yes, that means now I’m playing both TCG Pocket and TCG Live. Yes, I have a problem.

It was roughly four and a half years ago my wife and I sat down to decided my future. The pandemic was sweeping over us, we were unsure of our safety, much like everyone else, and I hadn’t worked in a couple of weeks. At the time I was a private tutor, driving all over the greater Phoenix area working with kids of all ages. Sure, the drive time was tough but that allowed for a lot of heavy podcast listening and the actual work time was much, much, much less than a classroom teacher.

Pay was better, too. It took some time (a couple years) to reach that level of comfort and stability in a privately owned business, but with a supportive wife and a dream pushing me onward, I was there.

Then the world fell apart.

Right after we welcomed two little boys into it.

I stayed home, telling my clients that maybe it wasn’t safe for me to be traveling around while an airborne illness was moving its way through people. We had children. They had children. It just made sense. I worried about the finances, but at the time money didn’t seem real. Nothing seemed real. We were just worried about making sure our boys were safe.

A few days passed. Then a few weeks. We weren’t kicked out of our home. We could still buy groceries. We weren’t traveling or anything. The finances were stable.

She asked me if I wanted to stay home, to do this instead of working, and continue to try and be a writer on the side. How could I say no to this level of freedom? And, more importantly, this time with our kids? That was April of 2020.

It’s now November of 2024 and I have a job once again. Still in education (even when I was planning out my dream writing life I was still a teacher in some respects), except this time it’s at the twins’ preschool. Going from working with emotionally charged 5th graders to…well, let’s be honest, emotionally charged preschoolers, is certainly a departure, but we love the school, what they teach, how they teach, and the energy they bring to learning. I’ve seen it firsthand when I volunteered and I guess now I’ll be responsible for keeping that up as a teacher’s aide, supporting and helping out in whatever room they need me in.

Will this new career impact my writing time? I don’t see how it can’t not. I have a place to be, every day, with others outside my family relying on me.

Guess we’ll have to be even more on top of it. These last two weeks of zero work has been nice in some ways, but the vacation is over. I clock in three times a week.

Thanks for reading,

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