MarLa Sink Druzgal

The day after Thanksgiving, WordPress issued a photo challenge on the word “thankful.” Here is my response.

What I am thankful for, more than anything else, is my husband and his belief in me.

Kurt makes me a better person. He loves me unconditionally. He’s been my best friend since we began dating in the early 90s, and I hope I’m lucky enough to grow old with him.

At the university where we were both undergraduates, my Creative Writing professor (who also believed in me before I believed in myself) made Kurt promise that he would one day support me so I could write full-time.  She believed in me that much. He believed in me so much that he agreed.

But life always has its own agenda…

For years I was the breadwinner. When he finally had his feet under him in his career, we still needed both our incomes to pay back school loans, cover medical expenses for all the alternative treatments I was having and to pay back loans for a money-sucking business failure: a publication called the Pool Pages.

Although I was unfulfilled in my career as a manager of Customer Service, then Logistics, the money was good and we were able to finally buy our home and car.

Kurt’s career continued to grow and several years ago he was offered a position with an international company which would involve traveling for work, the first thing he said to me was, “I remember making a certain promise back in college.  Would you like to let go of your management position and just write full time, traveling with me for my work?”

There was never any answer for me, other than yes. (I’m pretty sure the answer came with a lot of grateful tears.) I went back for my master’s degree in creative writing and have been working hard on finishing my first book, while blogging every day to build readership, and working on essays and stories every day as well. I take this honor seriously, and treat writing as I would any other job (except that for the first time, I actually love what I do.)

The life of a writer is not glamorous. It doesn’t pay well if you’re writing creatively, but if you work hard enough and make the right connections and are blessed with a little bit of luck, you get to publish your work and readers get to enjoy the results.

I work hard at writing not because I expect I will be the next best-seller, but because it fulfills me, and because I believe it’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Kurt believes it to, and for that, for him, I’m more thankful than anything.

Here’s to another year of working hard to pay back that faith he puts in me.

Love, Marla