Reuniting my passions

/ Heather
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Mirrored Passions
by Heather Button

First, I’d like to apologize for setting aside my online presence for a while. I’ve been soul-searching about my life, its direction and it’s taken its toll on my blogs (both here and at Circadian Design. There are going to be a number of changes to this site, likely culminating in merging the two together.

As many of you might know, I am an Intern Architect. Architecture is a demanding profession with obligations like taking exams, maintaining continuing education hours and keeping up on the latest design trends, technology and practice advice. I’ve been diligently working on getting my license since I started at architecture school in 1998. Design schools pick students who create in many forms. It’s a profession, like many others, that expects long hours devoted to projects or improving design skills in your spare time. I love it.

Less of you may be aware that I write fiction in my spare time. I push it aside sometimes in favour of life, my husband and other commitments but to date I have completed 4 manuscripts. They all need  refining but my writing is getting cleaner and I’m finding my voice. As I improve my craft I’ve been reading experts in the field. While they encourage me, they also believe that I should spend my non-writing time reading fiction and books on the craft, or building my platform by blogging and maintaining my online presence. The problem is, I love it too.

Both of my passions make me feel guilty for picking one over the other. But I need both of them. They exercise my brain in different ways and they feed off each other. I’ve learned that I build worlds, both real and imaginary.

Authors who still maintain their professional lives inspire me. Gail Vaz-Oxlade writes non-fiction, has an incredible online community and has created several television shows, all of which help people manage their money. Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist in 2 cities (Raleigh NC and Montreal QB), a university professor, and a fiction writer for the novels that inspired the television show Bones (which she also helps write).

I am also inspired by my parents. My mom, while working full-time and raising two kids (including still making it out to every single soccer/hockey game or dance recital), went back to school part-time to get her degree and took a year off for teacher’s college in order to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher. My dad supported her, and I never once felt like I came second to their dreams.

So, I’m going to merge both of my passions to this site. I’ve got a tentative schedule planned out for the next month or so. I am taking inspiration from Kristen Lamb and Michael Hyatt, who give a number of reasons why I should only have one online home base.

I’m going to try merging them, if nothing else, then for my sanity alone. I hope you’ll join me in this new direction.

If you’ve ever felt at a crossroad in life, what helped you make your choice? Are you happy with it?

17 thoughts on “Reuniting my passions”

  1. Hey, that sounds like a wonderful idea Heather. I love to read blogs of people who have varied interests. I guess this is because I’m all over the place on my blog too. Don’t you find you get bored of blogs where there’s redecorating or “look what I’m wearing” day after day? I do. There’s a blog I like where the ownder writes about all sorts of things at http://seenandsaid.blogspot.ca/, just in case you want a little peek. 🙂

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  2. Best of luck to you as you start this new merger venture!! It’s so wonderful that you’re discovering new directions for yourself and your blogging, and I wish you the best as you pursue this path. 🙂

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    • Thanks Khara! Your 1 ❤ my blog challenge has been really timely, helping me evaluate what exactly I want to do so that it's not too restrictive but not too all over the map!

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  3. This is great! I hope you find more overlapping than you knew you would before you combined them. I is hard to find the time for what seems like competing projects may this be a great solution for you!

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    • Thanks Linda. This changes are going to take place slowly. Next on my list is: New theme and layout. New content, then going back and re-tagging posts. Then, I’ll merge my other blog over, which will require its own reformatting. As I do that, I will pay to have wordpress update the links automatically, or have warnings on my other blog that I’ll be moving my content. Think it will be a series of weekend changes, with the exception of the content, which will be ongoing. I don’t even have a big blog but it will be quite a bit of work!

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  7. I feel you, Heather. My life is split between corporate training/instructional design/training coordination and writing. I knew from the start that I couldn’t handle two blogs, so I stuck with the one and made a training-related category. I know the people who like the writing part of me don’t necessarily like the training and vice versa, but it’s all part of my life, part of me and my gestalt. So it’s there. I don’t know that I’ve been completely successful, but these things take time. Time, I got 🙂 Best of luck with the reframing. Looking forward to what comes next.

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  8. Hey Heather! To add to your list of inspirational dual-career writers, my good friend Jennifer Lynn Barnes was a PhD student at Yale and is now a newly minted professor of psychology, all while consistently turning out amazing YA fiction on the side. As a witness to this process, I can say it seems a bit like voodoo, but it is definitely possible! (Side note: Jen happens to be BFFs with Ally Carter, who I saw you post about last week – small world! 🙂

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    • Christina, thanks for your reference. I follow Ally Carter on twitter and have seen her exchange a number of tweets with Jennifer Lynn-Barnes. Such a small world! And thanks for commenting!

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