Ian here—today’s post comes from Gina Troisi, a writer and fellow Day Jobber who also grew up in New Hampshire. The Angle of Flickering Light, her memoir about abuse, addiction, and escape, will be out this April with Vine Leaves Press, and you can check out her other awesome publications via her website. She’s also my co-organizer for the Vine Leaves online Zoom reading on March 4th as part of the SMOL Festival, which you can check out here to see both of us read our work.
Gina was kind enough to share her thoughts on the move from part-time-freedom to a new kind of freedom through her full-time office job, so read on to see how she did it….
Designing Our Lives Around Art, Not the Other Way Around
Since beginning my low-residency MFA program in 2007 and getting serious about my writing, I’ve perpetually attempted to design my work life to fit around my world of crafting stories. At that point, I’d been waiting tables and bartending in restaurants for years, and while doing this work I found I could make what seemed like a large amount of money in a short amount of time.
I’ve always believed in Grace Paley’s advice for writers to keep a low overhead, so I used the money I made for essentials, ate mostly at work, and had my days free to create. I would wake up, exercise, then dive into my writing, often getting four hours of creative time in before heading to the restaurant in the afternoon. I also avoided working the typical forty-hour work week: I worked three (sometimes four) nights a week, slinging drinks and serving food, and, in many ways, the added benefit of working in an environment with interesting, diverse characters fueled my writing.
I took pleasure in having weekdays off while most people were at their Day Jobs. It was quiet, uninterrupted time that I could easily protect, which is so necessary, as so many of us realize early on. And I felt I was free from the grind of the 9 to 5, free from a conventional, all-consuming world that had never seemed to make sense to me, even back when I was a kid, when I encountered so many adults who admitted to forgoing their passions for paychecks.
If I wanted to finish a project, I could ask coworkers to cover my shifts while I took off on a writing retreat for days, or while I spread pages of my memoir across my kitchen table and glued myself to the chair for a week. And for quite a while, this lifestyle seemed to work.
What Changed?
But working in the restaurant industry leaves little security: trends are fleeting, people decide to eat at the new hotspot, and the money you make each week can look drastically different. Security can be difficult to come by. There are often no such things as paid days off, health insurance, or retirement funds. Over time, I began to take on additional part-time jobs to build my resume, make more money, or because I craved more rewarding work.
Fast forward a few years, and I found myself tending bar two nights a week, working as a writing center coordinator at a community college, teaching as an adjunct at a university, and offering local creative writing classes out of a friend’s vacant warehouse—all of which I really enjoyed. But the thing about living paycheck to paycheck, about not having health insurance or savings or paid days off, is that you never feel like you should turn down money—you always need it for the day you get that dental work done or the day your car’s alternator dies.
When my coworkers asked me to pick up extra shifts, I did, and when the university asked me to pick up extra classes, I did. While I was still working an unconventional schedule—some days, some nights, with random weekdays off—on my so-called off days I had papers to grade and student emails to answer and courses to prep. I spent enormous amounts of time in the car rushing from job to job, and while I scheduled my days, made lists upon lists in my calendar to block out writing time, what I found was this:
Not only was I was exhausted, but I wasn’t doing anything one hundred percent, and in the free time I did have, my creative energy and mental focus for writing were dwindling.
I had too many different email accounts to check, too many overlapping tasks, and many days were double the length of a typical 9 to 5 workday. I was thirty-nine years old, and something about approaching forty was pushing me to think about my measly savings, my non-existent retirement fund, and the fact that I’d gone without health insurance for a long while. What if something happened?
Reassessing Freedom
Just over three years ago, for the first time in my life, I decided to do the thing I’d strived to avoid since graduating from college with an English literature degree sixteen years before: I took a conventional Day Job in an office.
Soon after I was hired, I bumped into an older female acquaintance, a wise, accomplished entrepreneur whom I greatly admire. When I told her about my plans and finished my explanation with a nervous laugh, she responded by saying, “This is going to create so much freedom for you.”
Her statement took me aback. Wasn’t I actually sacrificing my freedom? From a young age I’d had a concrete idea of what freedom was. I loved road trips, camping by rivers, not being tied down to a mortgage, and not being restricted to two weeks off a year. I could go to the grocery store or the bank at 11 a.m. on a Monday and meet a friend for coffee at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday. And this idea of freedom was meant to synchronize with my writing life—or so I’d thought.
But that day, after the conversation with the woman I admired, I realized that I had to change my mode of thinking.
Along with my new job came a routine, which was pretty foreign to me. I woke up at the same time every day and went to bed around the same time every night, which benefited my general well-being—my mental and physical health—and helped me feel more centered. Even though I was learning a new job, I felt less scattered, and more focused—more grounded.
I created a new schedule for myself, and while of course there was some trial and error, what resulted was this: I was able to devote most of my weekends to writing. The weekends provided stretches of hours I used to finish my memoir. I reserved my weeknights for exercise, meal prep, errands, and writing-related tasks such as catching up on emails and sending finished pieces out for publication.
While my job can be quite busy, when I sign off for the day, I’m truly off. The weeknight and weekend hours are mine alone. I have six and a half (paid) weeks off a year plus holidays, excellent health insurance, and a retirement fund. I realize this is more than most companies offer, and I’m immensely grateful for it.
Is it the perfect life for a writer? No. Would I like to spend less time working and more time writing and promoting my forthcoming book? Yes. But I’ve found that there is freedom in a consistent, livable paycheck deposited into my account each week. There’s a sense of freedom in being able to visit a doctor when necessary, and presenting a shiny laminated health insurance card instead of feeling my breath halt at the mention of the price. There’s freedom in having multiple days when I don’t even think about my Day Job—like right now as I write this during a two-week holiday break.
Despite these freedoms, I’m not claiming to have found the ultimate answer, and perhaps that answer doesn’t even exist. I’m consistently reassessing and reconfiguring how to manage my time. And like Ian’s described time and time again, it often still feels like a hustle—like I’m working around the clock to get everything done.
So while my idea of freedom continually reinvents itself, the one answer I come back to again and again is this: Just. Keep. Writing. And having a Day Job or lifestyle that supports this might very well look different for each of us.
You can find more from Gina Troisi at her website, her Instagram, or her Facebook page.
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