Turning the Carrot into Part of the Plan

I've recently begun to rethink something that has been a basic part of my debt-reduction plan. It's right there in the sidebar of this blog, in the About Me section: "working my way out of credit card debt so I have the financial freedom to go after some of my other dreams in life." Debt reduction was the plan and the "other dreams in life" was the carrot I was dangling in front of myself to stay on the plan.

But now it occurs to me that may not be the right way to go about it. I've been doing a lot of soul-searching about what I want in life and reading a few Barbara Sher books to help me out. (Thank god for Barbara Sher! If you ever find yourself in a place in life where you're not happy and not sure what you need to make you happy, pick up one of her books and there's a good chance you'll find the tools to figure it out.) And what I've concluded is the same thing I've concluded over and over again in my life and never really had the courage to go for in a really committed way. I want to be a writer. But in a sense, I've made my debt yet another excuse for not pursuing that dream right now. I've told myself that I can't afford to commit the time to writing because it takes so long to break through to be able to make any real money. So the plan was to pay off my debt so that I could afford to let my income drop a bit.

Now I realize that's not a very smart plan. For starters, even if my monthly expenses decrease by the approximately $500 a month I now have in minimum payments for credit card debts, the amount of time that represents that I could shift to writing is not that significant--it would really only free up about two days a month at the most. But more important than that is this little dilemma: tick-tock. Time is flying by me and it's clear that becoming debt-free is not going to be a quick process. Can I really afford to postpone my biggest dream until I have a zero balance? Events such as the sudden death of Tim Russert serve to remind me that this is not, as they say, a dress rehearsal. Life is happening now.

So I've begun to work out a new plan, one in which writing isn't the carrot, but another stepping stone, or series of stepping stones, along the path to financial freedom. Instead of putting so much energy into looking for small ways to earn or save a few extra dollars here and there, I'm going to put that energy into writing in a way that may lead to a few dollars and maybe eventually to many dollars. I won't give up my goal of being debt free, but I will no longer postpone my biggest dream for the sake of it. It's time to take a bite out of that carrot now.