A Day of Playing Ball

“I’m gonna be sophisticated and have no job. Or a job that looks from a distance like I do nothing.”
– Troy Barnes, Community

This is it. Final countdown. When I ride the elevators down at the end of the day today, it will be for the last time. And not just at this office, but anywhere, at least for a while. Today’s my last day of full time employment in the 9-to-5, day job kind of sense. Starting today, I work for myself. Freelance writing, full time.

I didn’t sell a novel for a six-figure book deal or anything. In fact, I still haven’t written a novel ever, and it may be that I never do. I’ll still have “day job” work in the form of work-for-hire writing which will make up the vast majority of my income, some of it SEO and web content work, some of it more exciting stuff. Beyond that, I don’t really know what it’ll be like. I haven’t not had a full time day job of the traditional variety since I was about sixteen. I didn’t work a full time job during college, but I took a full load of classes (and by that I mean full, I graduated in three-and-a-half years) and worked two or three part time jobs at all times. And I technically didn’t have a job of any kind for a period of a week or two several years ago, between the time when I got laid off from one law office and the time I got a full time temp job in the mail room of another one. So this is going to be a real change for me.

But it’s also what I’ve always wanted to do. A writer (and occasional editor) is all I’ve wanted to be for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, my mom kept one of those “School Days” books where you put in report cards and class pictures and stuff, and there was a space on each one of them for you to write in what you wanted to be when you grew up. For the first couple of years it said stuff like “archaeologist” (when I’d just watched Indiana Jones) or “scientist” (when I’d just watched Ghostbusters), but after about second or third grade, all it ever said was “writer.”

And now I get to do it for a living, every day. I’ll admit that for now the prospect is still probably about as terrifying as it is exhilarating, but still, you can’t get much better than that.

“And a day of playing ball is better than whatever most people have to do for a living.”
– Rube Baker, Major League 2