How is a Career Different Than a Job?

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I talk about Jobs a lot on this blog—as in, Day Jobs vs. Real Jobs, a Day Job as separate from a job you’re passionate about, a job as a way to establish your credibility, and so on.

What I don’t talk as much about, though, is the idea of a Career, which is something I’ve been overlooking both in my own life and in my philosophy about work in general.

I imagine a Career as a way of defining all the work you’ve done in a way you can be proud of.  A Career is something you’d openly tell others about when introducing yourself at a cocktail party, or something you’d write below your name on a business card.  A career is a way of defining yourself, and it establishes a kind of identity for you as a working person. Continue reading »

Sick Days Are Super-Important, and Don’t You Forget It!

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The title of this post says it all.

Last weekend I came down with a cold—not a super terrible one, but one that had me coughing with a sore throat and made my body ache for a few days.  When I realized what was wrong, I put some unnecessary projects on hold and took it easy for a few hours.  Then, when it was clear that I really feeling well, I called in to work and took a few sick days to recover.

Since I already wrote an entire post about how the national Japanese health care system makes it super-easy to go to the doctor, instead I want to emphasize that because my job as a teacher on the JET program gives me as many sick days as I need, I felt really comfortable calling in and staying home. This is because: Continue reading »

Shoe Leather Hustling: An Interview with Writer Sean Doolittle

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Sean Doolittle is a crime, suspense, and horror novelist and the author of seven books: Dirt (UglyTown, 2001), Burn (UglyTown, Bantam Dell, 2003), Rain Dogs (Bantam Dell, 2005), The Cleanup (Bantam Dell, 2006), Safer (Bantam Dell, 2009), Lake Country (Bantam Dell, 2012), and most recently Kill Monster (Audible Originals, Severn House, 2019).  Originally from southeast Nebraska, his books have won the ITW Thriller Award, the Barry Award, and many others.  He’s also worked full-time throughout his writing career.

I first met Sean in 2014 when he taught a graduate-level fiction writing workshop at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he gave me some instrumental feedback on my first novel and wasn’t afraid to make pop-culture references in class.  We kept in touch, and earlier this year sat down over Zoom to talk about getting his work out there, his mid-career slump, and finding time to write when you have a day job. Continue reading »

Guest Post: Gina Troisi on Trading Freedom, Time, and Health Insurance

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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. Continue reading »

I Got Offered a Moneymaking Gig I Wasn’t Comfortable With

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I have a category on this blog titled Doing the Right Thing in a not-so-subtle homage to the similarly named Spike Lee film. In it I tag posts that have to do with making good moral decisions in your creative and Day Job work.  Recently I had to make one of those decisions.

Quick flashback: Throughout my twenties, I was never in a good place with money.  I had enormous student loans, little savings, and most of the jobs I had either didn’t quite pay enough to let me live on my own, or left me scrambling to make ends meet every month.  I used to take on a LOT of side gigs to bring in extra cash: selling used books on Amazon, Craiglist gigs helping people move, weekends handing out cheap prizes at the racetrack, and other random stuff.  Even when I found full-time work as an elementary school secretary I still kept my old weekend gig feeding horses on a farm until the work ran out Continue reading »

I’m Taking Time Off From My Day Job and Using That Time Productively (Oh Yeah!)

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As some of you may have heard, back in the fall I was planning a Christmas trip back to New Hampshire to visit family and friends…which I ended up calling off when COVID cases and restrictions ramped up.  This sucked pretty hard, and while I don’t regret calling off the trip, it’s unfortunate that circumstances forced me into making that tough decision.

Here’s the good point, though: while planning the trip, I got approved for a four-week vacation from my Day Job.  And when I called off the US trip I decided I’d still use the time off.

Quick bit of backstory: My job as an ALT on the JET Program comes with, among other perks, 20 paid days off per year that are pretty flexible, especially if I schedule them in advance.  Last year because of COVID I barely used any, so when my new JET contract started in August I found myself with a mouth-watering 29 days to use or lose as I see fit.

And I have no intention of losing them. Continue reading »

I Took a Stress Test at Work and Here’s What I Learned

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I’ve been taking it slow on the blogging front lately while I reorganize some of my priorities in my writing, my Day Job, and everywhere else.  One factor that ties all those things together, though, is stress.

Back in October, two weeks after I talked to my boss about my stress problems, a single-page multiple-choice English stress survey suddenly appeared on the desks of all the foreign teachers in my city with notes asking us to fill them out.  Now, even though the city had asked every ALT to fill out the survey, the timing seemed like quite a coincidence ;-)

I got my results back a few weeks ago (also in English!) and they were…about what I expected. However, they also reinforced that I’ve been on the right track about the challenges I’m facing right now, including where those challenges are coming from and how to fix them. Continue reading »

Do You Shut Down or Check Out When You’re at Work?

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In my last few posts I’ve talked about my recent stresses and how I’m slowly making things better.  While some of those stresses are related to my daily life and creative work, a few of them have been Day Job-related—though again, I won’t be talking about them here for Day Job-related secrecy reasons.

What I have been doing, though, is talking to some coworkers I trust (both Japanese and Western) about the problem.  Talking to people I work with about work problems has a few benefits, including:

  1. It makes me feel better
  2. It lets my coworkers know about the problem so it’s not a secret anymore
  3. It lets me gain their perspective and hear their advice

As a result of Benefit Number 3, I’ve been hearing different ways that my coworkers deal with their own stresses, one of which I’d like to write about this week… Continue reading »

How Many Paid Holidays Does Your Country Give You???

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Last weekend was the 4th of July, which in America was a time for fireworks, socially distanced barbecues, and most importantly, an extra day off from work.

July 4th was a Saturday this year, which means that per American federal holiday guidelines, the holiday was observed on Friday, July 3rd and Day Jobbers across the country took a three-day weekend.  For me in Japan, though, Friday was a regular workday, and I celebrated the 4th by playing some online Scythe with my friends back home.

There is, however, an up side: this month Japan has two holidays, Marine Day and Sports Day, which, because of the now-postponed Tokyo Olympics, the government moved to July 23rd and 24th, respectively, giving us a four-day weekend.  Score! Continue reading »

Day Jobs are Great for Earning Small Wins

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Life can be rough, and little boosts help a lot.

Little boosts come in many forms: I get them when I see my friends, enjoy a fun dinner with my family, read an awesome book, or take a scenic bike ride.  Those aren’t the kinds of boosts I’ll be talking about in this post, though.

When I interviewed visual novel artist Miranda Reeder she talked about earning small wins to get her through slow periods.  Because she usually had several bigger projects going at once, taking time away from them to work on something smaller that she could finish and feel good about provided a small win Continue reading »

Thoughts on Going Back to Work After School Closures

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Quick Recap: The Coronavirus pandemic hasn’t hit Japan nearly as hard as most other countries, and in my region of Toyama there’s only been 227 cases since COVID-19 came here in late March.  Still, schools in my city were closed for most of March, all of April, and the first three weeks of May.  During that time I mostly stayed home, running a schedule that mixed creative work and Day Job work, where my coworkers and I made English movies for the kids to watch at home.

But that’s all changed now—schools in my city opened on May 21st, and as of June 1st the foreign teachers are back to work too.

Since most schools in the US are still closed, Japan’s school openings…may seem surprising to some of you.  Going to school naturally involves a lot of people being close together indoors for long periods of time, Continue reading »

Texting While Working on Something Else is the Bane of My Existence and I Hate it So Freakin’ Much

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Before starting this post I responded to a text someone had sent me and then put my phone away on silent so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at.

Why?  Because I HATE getting distracted by texts when I’m trying to work on something.

My usual mode of working involves disconnecting from my phone and all the distractions that come with it when I’m trying to get something done.  This normally works pretty well…except when I’m feeling down, or having trouble with my work, or waiting for something important.  In these cases I’ll intermittently pick up my phone hoping for a new message that’ll boost up my energy,.

That kind of compulsive phone-checking is…not good, and I don’t like that it invades my work habits.  At best, these microchecks distract me even further Continue reading »