Don’t Don’t Quit Your Day Job
I made one rule for myself when I decided to be a writer. Well — two, if you count “never read the comments.” But mostly just one:
Don’t quit your day job.
Wisdom for the ages (especially the ages of 21-25 or so, those awkward post-college years).
But as of last Friday — or a few weeks before, really, when I actually gave notice — it’s wisdom I’ve parted from. I worked my last shift in the Real World on Friday afternoon, and will not be going back in on Monday. Which brings us to our new rule for young writers:
Don’t don’t quit your day job.
That is to say, don’t work the safe hours you know you can keep just because you know you can keep them.
Don’t put the draft, the edits, the query letter; the agent hunting off because you need to work long shifts for the overtime.
Don’t settle for $8.50 an hour when you can make more at $0.03 a word and some decent self-promotion.
Don’t get content.
Don’t get boring.
Don’t get old.
It’s an insecure world out there. The people who played by the rules, worked at the same company for 40 years, and put money aside into their pensions are looking for second jobs now, at retirement age. The people who gave up doing something different for doing something safe are getting divorced, addicted, suicidal, depressed; indicted.
You might not be happy scrabbling for enough contracts to make rent month to month. But are you all that happy now?
Don’t don’t quit your day job. You’ll know when.
The only issue I’m working out now, Cubbage, is how you’ve seemed to write the exactly topical posts related to my life….I’m certain it’s chance, or the ego of a weak mind assuming it’s all relevant to me, but I think at the least right now this is topical.
Thanks. I appreciate the advice.
I thought your day job was killing polar bears with your bare hands or something. Isn’t that what they do up in your neck of the woods? I probably would have quit that job sooner.
No, no murdering bears, just studying moose herbivory and their response to insect swarms that may be arising as a response to global warming, and subsequently harming plants, that produce unusual chemical and physical defenses….so I study that whole mess of reactions.
Weather/climate -> Micurapteryx salicifoliella (the moth in question) swarms -> plants die, overdefend, and reproduce differently ->Moose feeding behaviors and food preference.
And yeah…It’s not my favorite job in the world.
Like it. May not be relevant right now, seeing as I don’t have a job. But given my own writing aspirations and the probability that I’ll grow tired of the code monkey gig at some point, I’ll need to keep this in mind.
I’m already into double-negatives. If I have to try and make it work for the currently-unemployed that title’s going to get very convoluted very quickly. But good luck!
Something to muse on as I mindlessly enter data for 8 hours tomorrow.
Man, don’t everyone read this and quit your job at once. That is a scene I do not need the blame for!
Congrats! By convincing everyone to quit their day job you’ve just solved the unemployment problem in the country, Geoffrey!
That…sounds a lot more like causing it, to me. What are you seeing that I’m not?
Unemployment is measured by people looking for a job who can’t find one. If you convince people to quit/not to look for a day job then you open up some day jobs and remove people from the looking for day job pool and thus lower the unemployment numbers.
Thanks – I really enjoyed this! I also took a leap of faith myself recently.