If you listen to Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn podcast (highly recommended!) then in the last one (29/8/16) you would have heard her talking about measuring her writing life/career in Olympic periods which is an interesting way to look at things. It’s well known that we overestimate what can be achieved in one year but underestimate what we can do in four.

Our Olympians manage incredible feats by committing themselves to hard work and no excuses. They did an awesome job once again this. I thought, why not take on the challenge and think about my own life/writing career since the 2008 Beijing Games.

Much has changed. Much has stayed the same.

Either way, it has all come down to my actions, my decisions, my choices.

So here goes.

Beijing 2008

I was in Warsaw, Poland teaching English as a foreign language, writing for content mills (Helium), dabbling in freelance writing, trying to finish the upteenth novel that would probably be trashed, and not doing enough travelling. I’m not sure how I feel about this time in my life but if I were to go back I would certainly do things differently. We live and learn. Had anyone told me a year earlier that I’d be living in Poland (I was born there but moved to Australia when I was 8), I would have laughed out loud and told them they were crazy. Well, life happens. Somehow I ended up going on holiday and stayed for 3.5 years. The upside: I got to meet more of my extended family and spend time with my grandparents.

One constant was that I wanted to write for a living. The dream of being an author was still alive. I just wasn’t aware of the Amazon’s abilities. I had heard of Matthew Reilly’s success at self-publishing (he’s now a multimillion traditional published author), but I didn’t really want to hand-sell 10,000 copies and hustle from bookshop to bookshop begging them to stock my books in hopes of a traditional publisher noticing me.

I probably should have done more research towards the self-publishing route. Hmm.

Let’s teleport to the next Games…

London 2012

Back in Australia. Yay. This is home. Ok, I feel at home everywhere but Australia is my base. Comfort and safety. No matter where I end up, this is where I always want to return.

Writing wise I was in a bit of a jam. There were several blogs I started and stopped. My confidence had plummeted for various reasons. I wasn’t sure what I was doing or what I wanted. I was working lots, commuting lots and training for marathons and triathlons. I was still writing, there was a book I was working on that I kept telling myself that it would be published, but I wasn’t taking myself seriously enough.

Fast forward another four years…

Rio, 2016

I have two novellas and a novel on the market. I finally self-published in 2015 and have set hefty goals for the years to come.

I’m an author.

Finally. After twenty years of dreaming about it, it’s happened. I’m still working in the financial services industry and I enjoy it for the most part. I actually worry that if I don’t have the commute I won’t have time to write! But I’d love to write full time eventually.

On a more personal note, I’m now a mum to a toddler who takes up a large chunk of my free time. He is awesome. But I’m bias because he’s mine! Maybe that’s why the commute is so productive!

Look into the future…

Tokyo, 2020

It’s easy to say, hey this is where I want to be at such time. The harder part is actually making it happen. I’m no stranger to setting hefty goals and then being disappointed I haven’t achieved them. But then down the track I see that in fact some have been ticked off in ways I hadn’t expected.

Where do I want to be in my writing career in 2020? That’s a good question. Firstly, I want to be a full-time author-entrepreneur. That means earning $120,000+ per year (after tax) from my writing.

In four years I’d like to have at least twenty books on the market (that’s 4-5 books per year) including both fiction and non-fiction, novels, novellas and shorter e-books. I would also like for my blogs to be popular and earning a decent income while helping others achieve their entrepreneurial dreams.

Why do I want this? My son will be in school and I want to be there for pick ups and drop off and sports carnivals and all that jazz.

One day in the near future (3 – 5 years), I’d love to hire a car and drive across Europe over a six month period with my husband and son. This would be an epic adventure and being an authorpreneur can allow me to do just that as it would mean I could still work on the road and income would be trickling (hopefully flowing!) in from book sales.

I think to achieve your dreams the why has to be stronger than the what. If you really want something, you’re going to work your booty off and get it done regardless of what life throws at you.

Thanks Joanna Penn for suggesting this challenge it really allowed me to reflect over the last eight years and look at the bigger picture towards the future. Cheers to writing (and selling) more books!

How has your life evolved over the past few Olympic time periods? Where do you see yourself when the next Olympics roll around?