To day job or not to day job?
To day job or not to day job, that is the question. Writing is a high-wire act, and making a living at writing means juggling while crossing the wire, and the other end of the wire may not be connected to anything.
I’m in the generation that likes to use the world “adult” as a verb, a thing you do rather than something you are. Other generations have mocked that usage but it does describe something that feels more like a process than something intrinsic to my age. I’ve often wished, after reaching one milestone or another, that I could say okay, I’m done. I’ve solved this. I never need to worry about that part of adulthood again.
But that’s not how it works. That’s not how adulthood works. That’s not how being alive works.
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So after spending 5 years as a full time writer, and moving from New York to New Hampshire to make it easier to survive on a smaller salary, I’m looking for ways to make money outside of writing again. I recently completed a bootcamp in Data Science, and I have a long tech career with good experience to leverage.
I almost wrote to fall back on instead of to leverage. The language of the fall, the failure, the judgement inherent in the phrase, don’t quit your day job is hard to fight.
I am trying to fight it. I’m working on making a virtue of necessity. I can’t rely 100% on my writing to keep the lights on. And there are also other, less tangible benefits to opening up other income streams. Writing can be isolating, and also feel like a selfish endeavor. I am writing my ideas, alone, and it’s my name on the cover when it’s finished. It’s what I love, but a part of me misses being involved in project teams with more than one person, pulling together for something.
Writing is also extremely personal. I feel enormous pressure to write well and truthfully, to write stories people want to read, and also the stories I am moved to write. And that pressure is high even without requiring myself to earning a living by writing as well. I want to see what it will feel like to take a bit of that pressure off, and to give my writing projects all the time they need.
I can’t totally deny the feeling of failure that comes with this, though. We like to view adulthood as ticking off a to-do list, knocking down milestones, career and personal. It never is fully done though, not until the end. And it’s not a path from one great success to another, always climbing upward. It’s meandering. Sometimes, when things are falling apart, it’s a dark path from this day into the next, and it’s fruitless to look further ahead than that.
For me, right now, the path is toward opening my life and my scope of my projects, to keep writing, and see where else I can contribute my talents. Am I falling back? I hope not. I hope instead I’m falling forward.
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