How Important is Your Stability?

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Two weeks ago I talked some pretty big talk about not accepting things as they are and how it’s always better to take steps to change a bad situation, since this is pretty integral to how I live my life.  There’s one thing I forgot to mention, though:

Making change happen always comes with risk.

I don’t write about this nearly enough, but Risk is a pretty vital part of the whole Change equation: every time you change something in your life, there’s a Risk that said Change will make things worse or uncomfortable, and that can be a scary thing.  (See what I did Continue reading »

Financial Update: I Saved Enough to Live On For 6 Months!

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The title says it all.

Since I started my Secret Office Day Job last June I’ve been saving a lot—the exact amount ranges between 10 and 40% of each month’s income (well, 40% was only once…) depending on my expenses, how many side gigs I have, or how much overtime I’ve worked.

(Luckily I keep a budget each month to track how much I make and where it’s going—and if you click on no other link in this post, check out my piece on the basics of budgeting, because it’s that important!)

My savings routine works like this: at the beginning of every month I track my previous month’s income, pay all my bills, and see how much I have left.  I keep $2,000 bucks in my checking account to cover unforeseen expenses (car trouble, computer explodes, bills I’ve forgotten Continue reading »

Don’t Just Say “It Is What It Is”

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A while ago I was talking to a friend who was having trouble at his job.  He felt overwhelmed with work and his manager wasn’t helping, and things were getting worse because of some massive disorganization within his company.  He and I talked about his problems on a long car ride, and at one point he heaved a heavy sigh, leaned over the wheel, and said, “But, you know, it is what it is.”

Another time I was helping a different friend make some renovations on his basement.  We were doing trim work and cutting two baseboard pieces that met in a corner.  The pieces didn’t fit at all and looked so bad that no amount of caulk and paint would hide the gap.  My friend looked at the woodwork, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I’m not too worried about it.  It is what it is.”

Then, two nights ago, I went down to my apartment basement to do some laundry Continue reading »

March Novel Update: Draft Three Complete!

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If you’ve been following my Novel Updates Series then you already know the story: I’m writing a novel that takes place at a grad school writing program in the Midwest, and for the last year and a half I’ve been buried in the revision process—you know, that part where you go back and edit everything you’ve written until it’s actually turns out good.

Last year I finished pen and paper edits for the third draft, and a few months after starting my Secret Office Day Job I started typing them up, page for page and line for line.  Because I’ve been busy, it was taking a REALLY long time, which is why I started posting updates here to keep myself on track.

Well two days ago, at around 11:00pm, I finally finished typing.  That’s Continue reading »

Why Sacrifices Are Necessary (and Hard….)

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Warning: Stream of consciousness ramble ahead.

I think a lot about how I spend my time, and how much of that time I should be spending on creative work or other things that move me closer to my goals. I used to think of this as a simple equation: the more time I devoted to creative work, the more I’d get done…though this led to more than a few cases of terrible burnout that weren’t productive at all (which sucks, btw).

That led me to alter my thinking: maybe taking plenty of breaks was the way to go, because if I stayed as rested and stress-free as possible then my mind would be clearer to focus on my writing and other tasks that required focus. I went through a period when I set aside every Saturday as a No Exceptions Day of Rest, and another Continue reading »

I Signed a Book Contract!!! (Here’s How it Happened)

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AWESOME UPDATE: Eikaiwa Bums is out!  This post is about how I queried the press and signed the contract, but you can also read about what happened when it actually came out, or cut to the chase and order a copy from my webstore.

So a little while ago I got some REALLY amazing news: in August, Blue Cubicle Press will be publishing my short story, Eikaiwa Bums, as a chapbook in its Overtime series of fiction about work.  And just like that, I’ll have a book out.

Though this is hardly my first time getting my writing published, the Eikaiwa Bums chapbook feels like a BIG step because it’s an actual printed book that people can hold in their hand and read, as opposed to reading online or as part of a bigger magazine. (Don’t despair, virtual readers: there’ll Continue reading »

India Trip Reflections #3: “People Should Know Their Place”

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About halfway through the India trip I met a guy whose name I won’t mention here, both to protect his identity and because I’ve forgotten it.  He’d been to college and was now working a comfortable middle-class job that paid a decent salary, had plenty of room for advancement, and didn’t require him to work too hard.  He seemed pretty happy, or at least satisfied with how his life was going.

During the hour or so we spent together he told me about a lot of things: about his job, about arranged marriages in India, and about the political problems and corruption the country faced.  Then we got on the subject of social media, which he wasn’t a big fan of.

I thought it was odd that someone so close to my own age (he was in his late twenties) could Continue reading »

Cool Stuff I Did in 2017, and Cool Stuff I’m Going to Do in 2018

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It’s been a long month, and an even longer year.

That’s not to say it hasn’t been a successful year of getting a lot of things done, because it has.  Since I talk all the time about the importance of tracking your goals, here’s a quick list of things I got done in 2017:

  • Turned This Blog Into a Regular, Consistent Project – Last January But I Also Have a Day Job was a mere scattering of posts with some half-finished static pages and few regular readers.  For the last 12 months I’ve posted an entry a week, gained a lot of Continue reading »

You Don’t Pay Me to Care

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I used to stress out about work, but then I stopped.

Way, way back before I’d come up with the Day Job Philosophy, at my previous jobs I was always trying to support my employer by doing my best, since that was the way I’d been raised.  I worked hard, tackled all the assignments I was given, tried to impress my superiors, and focused a lot on making other people happy—and it almost destroyed me.

Back then, I believed that if I did a job well I’d naturally be recognized for it, which would then lead me to more success and material rewards Continue reading »

What I Do When I Don’t Feel Like Working

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Some days I just don’t have the energy to sit down and do my creative work.  It happens to all of us, and if you hear someone say that they can work every day despite the circumstances than they’re either lying through their teeth or they’ve somehow found the Holy Grail of Creativity that magically allows them to work at 100% peak performance all the time (which doesn’t seem likely).

Everybody reading this knows that feeling: when you come home tired from a long day at work, when you’re worried about bills, your future, or a breakup, or when you wake up on a Sunday too hungover to do much of anything.  In these shittiest of shitty moments, the last thing you want to do is Continue reading »

October Novel Progress Update!

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It’s been a busy month, but not for novel-writing.

When I last posted about my progress on my new novel I was getting back into the game after a 3 month hiatus brought on mostly by my new job and recent move.  Taking a break from writing helped me get a lot of stuff taken care of, but after so many weeks away I realized I had to get back to the novel or else I risked becoming even more disconnected from it than I already was—and that wasn’t a good thing. Continue reading »

You Have to Find the Value in Your Work

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I think a lot about where confidence comes from, and why sometimes I’m absolutely full of confidence about the work I’m doing (creative work, Day Job work, and everything else) while other times everything I’m working toward feels meaningless.

It’s amazing how quickly these two mindsets can switch back and forth in the same week, or even the same day, even when nothing’s really changed.  I’m still the same person, I still have the same job, I’m still working on the same novel, and I’m still trying to get my writing out there in the same ways.  Big successes usually deliver equally large boosts of confidence, while rejections usually set me back more than I care to admit.  But most of the time, though, there’s Continue reading »