Milestone
I quit my job today. I had been a project manager for an IT consulting company. It was a good job: high pay, a good company that tried to minimize your normal working nonsense, and I was good at it. I was young for what I did, and I had no real training, but I found a niche in middle management that the smartest of the smart either had been promoted through or had been smart enough not to get involved in the first place. As a result, I stood out, at least at my little company in my little corner of the world.
Why did I quit? Everyone needs a job, and this was pretty good as far as jobs go, certainly much better than the jobs of the poor suckers at the clients I worked with, people who slaved away for Major UK Retailers or Large Insurers. I don't need a job, though. I've got enough lucre stashed away to keep me in food and and shelter and the occasional new bauble, at least for a while. So why give all my energy to something which, at least for me, is really a gimmick to keep me occupied and challenged? It's an easy choice, right? But what if there's nothing else planned after that? Is it still easy?
I fixed the no plans problem with an event, a moment, an epiphany one day a couple of months ago. It was at brunch with Eisa. She was in the restroom. Sitting at the booth waiting for her to come back or our yuppie Japanese eggs to come, sipping what was, in retrospect, one coffee over my limit, I decided that this, what you're reading, was enough. No, not that I would quit my job to work on an unread blog, but that I would quit work to write. Three hours a day. Legitimate attempts to get published writing about sports or rock, and illegitimate attempts to generate ideas for fiction by blogging or journaling.
The life change got a lot easier to explain a day or so after the decision. I got a call from my oldest friend offering a road trip to Alaska for the summer and soon after Eisa and I decided to try (or retry, in her case) life in Hilo. It's much easier to tell Bill Programmer from the office that you're leaving your job to move to Hawaii than it is to tell him that you're leaving to write, but no you really haven't ever done that before, and no you don't really have any ideas. And in my mind, retirement has sort of become about moving to Hawaii, but that's not what it is. That's a place to be, a way to have adventures and to keep myself and my girl excited and exciting, but leaving my job wasn't for that. It was for, or more exactly because of, the fact that at brunch in early April, hopped up on expensive coffee, I decided that three hours of writing per day, even without any discernable ideas to follow, was enough.
Was I right? I think so. Am I worried that I'm going to waste a singular opportunity? Yes. I haven't written much in those two months. Excuses that I was still fully employed did apply, but I've had time. I spent this Sunday flipping between Die Hard II and Exiled: A Law and Order Movie, didn't write a word, and couldn't even summon the will to sit up straight on the couch, though my fingers did feverishly work the clicker. Will I do that in Hawaii? Will I spend the rainy days with digital cable? Will I get discouraged when heavenly prose doesn't flow from my fingers in the first week? There's a chance, but that's my challenge.
Why did I quit? Everyone needs a job, and this was pretty good as far as jobs go, certainly much better than the jobs of the poor suckers at the clients I worked with, people who slaved away for Major UK Retailers or Large Insurers. I don't need a job, though. I've got enough lucre stashed away to keep me in food and and shelter and the occasional new bauble, at least for a while. So why give all my energy to something which, at least for me, is really a gimmick to keep me occupied and challenged? It's an easy choice, right? But what if there's nothing else planned after that? Is it still easy?
I fixed the no plans problem with an event, a moment, an epiphany one day a couple of months ago. It was at brunch with Eisa. She was in the restroom. Sitting at the booth waiting for her to come back or our yuppie Japanese eggs to come, sipping what was, in retrospect, one coffee over my limit, I decided that this, what you're reading, was enough. No, not that I would quit my job to work on an unread blog, but that I would quit work to write. Three hours a day. Legitimate attempts to get published writing about sports or rock, and illegitimate attempts to generate ideas for fiction by blogging or journaling.
The life change got a lot easier to explain a day or so after the decision. I got a call from my oldest friend offering a road trip to Alaska for the summer and soon after Eisa and I decided to try (or retry, in her case) life in Hilo. It's much easier to tell Bill Programmer from the office that you're leaving your job to move to Hawaii than it is to tell him that you're leaving to write, but no you really haven't ever done that before, and no you don't really have any ideas. And in my mind, retirement has sort of become about moving to Hawaii, but that's not what it is. That's a place to be, a way to have adventures and to keep myself and my girl excited and exciting, but leaving my job wasn't for that. It was for, or more exactly because of, the fact that at brunch in early April, hopped up on expensive coffee, I decided that three hours of writing per day, even without any discernable ideas to follow, was enough.
Was I right? I think so. Am I worried that I'm going to waste a singular opportunity? Yes. I haven't written much in those two months. Excuses that I was still fully employed did apply, but I've had time. I spent this Sunday flipping between Die Hard II and Exiled: A Law and Order Movie, didn't write a word, and couldn't even summon the will to sit up straight on the couch, though my fingers did feverishly work the clicker. Will I do that in Hawaii? Will I spend the rainy days with digital cable? Will I get discouraged when heavenly prose doesn't flow from my fingers in the first week? There's a chance, but that's my challenge.
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