Writers and day jobs

I was chatting with one of my writing friends and found out that as of a few days ago, he quit his day job and is writing full time. I got oddly excited at the thought, even though I have no plans of quitting my day job. I asked how long it took him to get there.

"10 years I've been writing." He answered.

I could feel my heart break.

As someone who has only recently come to the conclusion that writing is my thing, I knew it wouldn't happen overnight. On the other hand, I didn't realize that it would take so long either.

As of today I've been published for about 3 years now, and honestly even with all the progress that I have made, I don't feel like I am anywhere near where I should be.

My heart breaks again.

The numbers hurt, I won't lie. The months with .35 cent paychecks from book sales, hurts.

I keep going though. I do it for myself. For my readers. I do it for the LGBTQ persons who have not found their comfort yet.

I will write on.
I will continue my journey.

Dealing with personal feelings

     Title says it all, this post will be a bit short and very personal. As hopefully all of you know I did recently release my first fantasy genre novel, and I was hoping it would do well. I figured sense it isn't such touchy subject (porn for a simple word) that it would bring in a wider group of people. It let me down. I'm not sure why I expect so much from myself, or my books, and I don't know what I'm "doing wrong". I don't know what I really expected, just thought that if I tried hard and kept going that it would slowly get better. My numbers dropped with this book. I know not everything I do will be great, but I always just hope that instead of one selling maybe two will.

     I don't really know what steps to take next to build my audience, maybe I should dump money into something now that I am overworking myself with "normal jobs". I just don't know what to do or where to turn to next on this, and I feel it breaking my spirit. I have all these books planned and I am so excited to write them, but yet I feel like I never will because I need to work "real jobs" and while yes I can (and will) keep writing while working 60+ hour weeks, it feels like those novels will take so much longer and my dream feels like it's fading.

     I apologize for such a depressing post, but I do feel like others need to see they are not alone in their feelings. This happens. It sucks, but it does happen. You can either let the feelings win, or keep writing. I know that I will keep writing.