I just quit my job to pursue writing full-time! I know that’s insane in this economy right. But I have to tell you, writing that resignation effective immediately email felt pretty awesome. Also scary, it’s true, but mostly awesome. 

Here is the thing: I’ve wanted to find a way to make a living writing fiction for as long as I can remember. But since I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth my first job wasn’t writing for the Harvard Lampoon, it was flipping burgers at Mc’Donalds. That was followed by work as a busboy, a barrista, a cubicle jockey,a fire fighter, a mental health counselor, a window washer and a host of other blue collar jobs. It’s hard to come home and work on the Great American Novel when you come home exhausted and covered in the sweat and grime of the day. Good writing requires a certain lucid clarity that requires time and a reservoir of focus.

I have never really had the luxury of focusing solely on a writing project, it has always been something tackled in the in between hours. I have always chosen to work part-time or menial jobs so that I’d have the time to write. In doing this I have ended up neither having much time to work and pursue a normal career, nor had quite enough time to really focus on writing either. At the start of this year I vowed that if writing as a way to make a living did not take off by the years end I would shelve it and just focus on working a regular 9-5, 40 hours a week like everybody else. But if this is to be my last chance to take a swing at my dreams I want to go out big. And so it is with relish that I look at the upcoming 2cnd half of the year! Nothing to do but write for half a year, no bosses, no meetings, no customers, no rules. Just me and a pencil and a stack of spiral notebooks. Some serious shit is about to go down ladies and gents.

I will keep y’all posted how it goes.

(Oh yeah, you’re wondering how this crazy sabbatical is even fiscally possible at all. Four words: cashed out retirement bennies!)