Oh, hey, there you are. Patiently waiting for me to blog about something other than home renovation or the World Cup. Have you been waiting long?
Can I get you something? A tea? Coffee? Iced venti non-fat extra-hot four-shot vanilla three-pump-hazelnut soy latte with whip? No? Pull up a chair, I’ll shake the cobwebs off my brain and tell you where I’ve been.
On July 7th, I’m leaving the job I’ve had for four years, since a week after graduating from college. It’s been a lovely, stable four years but it’s time for me to move on – a decision my boss and I came to mutually and which works for everyone. The job, without getting into too much detail, has become more admin-heavy than it was when I started and there’s very little room to move through no fault of my boss. So, I’m leaving. I’ll still be writing pretty regularly for them, but I won’t be sitting in the office.
But no, I’m not leaving for another job. That would be easy, I admit, and maybe some cynics among you may say the smart thing to do. But the other jobs I’m qualified for are, well, a lot like this one. And in four years, I might find myself in a similar position – four years on and I haven’t started the career I really want, which is to write.
So as of July 10th, I’m reporting to my own desk, in my own office, to work on my writing. Not just my own woefully unpaid fiction (although I have to dedicate a certain percentage of each day to that or a certain fiesty little redhead will eat me for breakfast) but paid freelance writing on the web and elsewhere. Let it be known that I have no idea how or to what level of success I’m going to be doing this, only that I hold in my hand a precious few leads and gigs and I’ll be chasing for more.
And I’ll be looking for part-time work to supplement the writing income. I’m being arrogant and naive and bull-headed right now, hoping to only work part-time so that the rest of my week can be spent on writing. Perhaps I will be chased naked and scratched and weeping out of this conviction but that is for me to find out and not for you to crow about afterwards, you naysayers.
If you’re getting the vibe that I’m terrified, give yourself a cookie. I’m white-knuckled, wide-eyed terrified. I’ve never really had to work for myself before, and I’m not entirely sure where I’ll find the necessary reserves of determination and discipline required. Maybe in that new organized closet?
Most days, I feel like a cartoon character who’s been trying to push a car up a hill with her back and as the car starts its inexorable slide back down the hill, her feet are on fire with all the “not that way!” scrabbling she’s doing. Not that way! I keep yelling at myself. But that way I’m going, and what’s more, I pointed the car down the hill myself. So there! How was that for a metaphor?
Or perhaps I feel like I’ve been fighting for years to get those stupid chinese handcuff things off my fingers, wiggling and whining and berating myself for being trapped – only to find myself with two free fingers and no idea what to do now.
Are you seeing what I’m saying? All this freedom, freedom I used to crave from the confines of a 9 to 5 box, is suddenly mine. The shove I knew I needed has finally arrived. But what do you want me to DO with it? Can I get back in the box now?
It’s a daily struggle to remind myself not to go running back to the box after a week on the outside, because if I do, I’ll never have any proof that I can do this, this freedom thing, this self-motivated thing, this writer thing.
So, putting aside all the jumbled metaphors, I’m going to be unemployed and writing, looking for the elusively perfect fit of part-time work (dog-walking? espresso-slinging? proofreading? research-work?) that will leave me with twenty or so hours a week in which I pay myself, so to speak, to be brave.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s exciting. Exciting like riding a rollercoaster built on a swamp and manned by pirates. Swamp pirates.

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