The reason why Monday Megalomania is posting so late (if you notice, it usually posts early in the morning) is because I had to put my notice in at my day job first.
Yeah, you read that right. I’m quitting my day job.
There are a lot of contributing factors, the biggest two being I’ve got another opportunity that I think will work out better for me and I’m not cut out for cube life.
The new opportunity is coming from my friend DaLette. I admit that I’ve been looking for an out from the day job for a few months. The steady money is nice, but I resented how little time and energy it left me to write. I initially thought to find a new day job, something part time, possibly in retail. But pickens have not improved since the last time I was looking for a day job. I was feeling stuck and pretty miserable.
However, DaLette was looking into starting her own business and after some research decided she’d keep doing things the way she’d been doing as a freelance landscaper/decorator, wedding officiator, and self-published author. One hell of a mixed bag, right? But it works for her and that’s what she told me. If I wanted to get out, I needed to make my own day job and freelance my strengths.
It took a few weeks for me to understand exactly what she was getting at. My gig is writing and I haven’t been too successful at making money at it. I couldn’t really think of anything else I had a shot at doing that would pay my bills and my bills need to be paid. Remember I made a mess of my finances pursuing this writing dream without a regular income and I’ve yet to really recover.
But the seed was planted in my head and I started looking in my life for things I could do to freelance, so to speak. It took a little time, but it finally hit me. One thing I’ve always loved to do and always been pretty good at doing is making jewelry. Bracelets have always been my specialty, but I’ve done necklaces, too. It occured to me that between friends, relatives, and the Internet, I could make a little money doing it.
With this thought in my head, I decided why should I wait to have someone publish my short stories? Why can’t I just publish my own? If I’m going to be selling my goods, I should sell the goods I really want to be selling, right? Right (I’ll be doing a post about self-publishing on Wednesday).
Now, I’m a very money-minded person (that’s a post for another Monday, too). I have to crunch numbers in order to look at the financial reality of what I’m getting into and I admit, I wasn’t thrilled with what I looked at initially. But after some thought, I figured at the very least it would get me some extra cash.
I started moving forward with these new projects, plotting how to use word of mouth and the Internet to my advantage. I like having a plan. It gives me goals. It gives me something to work toward. It makes me feel like I have some control.
And then DaLette stopped by.
Her freelancing has been going well. So well, in fact, that she needs some help. I offered to be that help before. I can be that help now. I’m going to be that help.
I figure that between my ventures and the work DaLette can offer me, I can keep my head above water in terms of paying the bills and have time to get back to seriously working on writing. It’s going to be tough and it’s going to be work, but it’s going to be work at something I WANT to do and I LIKE to do.
Yeah, that brings me to the second factor. I didn’t really like my job. Maybe about a month into the gig I realized that I didn’t like it, but couldn’t figure out why. There was no reason that I could put my finger on other than I’d rather have been writing. However, I felt that even though I didn’t like it, I could tough it out for a while for the sake of the paycheck. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t a bad job.
In the past few months, that’s changed. The job has changed. I’m not happy with the change and I’m not happy with some other things that I won’t get into out of respect for the people that still work there. I’ve got some hang-ups with the way some things are done and some things are handled and there’s no reason for me to hang around in that environment and make things worse.
So, I’m getting out. After Labor Day, I will be free.
And back to working 7 days a week for whatever scratch I can make.
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