I quit my job!
I'd love to tell some cool exciting story where I was all like "No, screw YOU - my band is on FIRE! We're gonna burn up the WORLD" but since I haven't had a band since high school (whatup LSDean and the Flashbacks!) that would be a big huge lie.
No, it was an amicable parting with an invitation to do work for which I'm more suited, like writing, or knee breaking. This is all at some point in the undetermined future, so I'm not banking on it.
Wow, random web clip art really delivered this time
Speaking of banks, I've got about 2 months living money. In theory, I should be fine. This means that, yay, I get to re-quit smoking for the eight hundredth time as I can no longer afford it, and for my regular bar companions this does signal the return of the flask, allowing me to discretely sip cheap gin until I am no longer capable of sipping cheap gin from a flask discretely, resulting in my ejection from said bar and a good public pants-pissing.
I also have to work for another 3-4 weeks without additional compensation. Does that suck? Yes, but as I've already been paid for the work I'll be doing, it could be worse.
So what will I do when the money runs out? I have no idea, but I'm going to guess it involves drinking. Lots and lots and lots of drinking.
To all my frieeeeeeends
Oh, right, for money - well, at this point I'm making good on promises to myself to write, to create, and to hopefully not starve to death.
Did I mention the drinking?
Yes, I know there's a recession on, but I feel I should make clear that outside of academia, I am not looking for a career right now. I don't need it, and I don't want it. Kudos to everyone around me doing well, but this, to me, is doing well - just enough creature comfort to have fun, enough freedom to stay spontaneous, and absolutely nothing in my life that I can't blow off when it's time to knock out a chapter.
As Dave Hickey said (though he may have been paraphrasing, so hell if I know for sure) - "As a writer, you shouldn't have anything you have to feed, paint, or take care of," and I've found for the third time now that careers, real nine-to-five-plus-overtime-let's-meet-a-deadline sort of stuff is just a colossal undertaking.
In my experience, having a career and being a writer means that you basically have two careers. Naturally, one of them has to give, and foolishly in this case I let my job win. Rather than bail out at the first sign of real trouble, I tried to stick it out and tell myself "Oh, I'll write this weekend" or "No biggie, you'll get the hang of this and then you'll have lots of time." That never happened, so now writing is my career and everything else is just where I go to make some spare change and meet new and weird people for a few hours a week.
Right now I'm looking for the sort of job that doesn't mind if you show up a little hungover and occasionally take notes in your pocket notebook as you work I don't expect any such job to pay very well, but I don't need it to, so that's fine. My five-year plan of writing, writing, writing is back on track.
In other news, I've pretty much sat out the last week culture-wise, so my apologies if this hasn't been the swinging hot spot for criticism. I've been completely off my game, but I'm plugging back in. Thankfully, I should have a lot more time to get some writing done as this foolish exercise in middle-class responsibility winds down.
Apt metaphor is apt
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