The Day Job Blog

CBC_journalists_in_Montreal.jpg

Are you hard at work on projects that bring you tremendous fulfillment but don’t exactly pay in folding money? Do you face the ever-harrowing struggle of balancing creative work with life’s other responsibilities? Is the job where you spend a substantial portion of your time not what really drives you, even though you do it anyway?

Then you’ve come to the right place. We all gotta keep the bills paid.

I Checked My Email in the Morning and It Threw Off My Whole Day

Comment

Yep, that’s what happened.

I’ve gone through a variety of email checking routines over the past few years, ever since I first realized in 2017 that I was checking email too frequently and it was causing me to get distracted during the day.  Even worse was that for me, email (also: texting, social media, Google News feed, etc.) was causing me to feel dependent, so that during the day I’d reach for my phone when I was feeling bored or down hoping for a quick pick-me-up.

Long story short, that way of using my phone sucks, and I really don’t like it.

Recently I also I wrote about my new text-message-free morning routine, where I physically close my eyes when I shut off my phone alarm in the morning to avoid seeing text notifications that could throw off my entire day Continue reading »

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

Comment

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

Comment

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 »

March Novel Progress – Knee-Deep in the Excitement of Drafting

Comment

I promised you all updates on my new novel a few weeks back, so here’s how it’s going…

I’m a decent way into drafting Act I, and a lot of the scenes are starting to come together in a way that feels really natural.  It’s like the more I work on the novel, the more I’m able to mentally fill in information about the characters, their backstories, and the plot, so that areas that once felt like a confusing void feel clearer.  Now, when I’m at my Day Job, in the shower, or working on something else, I feel ready and excited to sit down and write.

Simply put, the more I work on this novel, the easier the process becomes, and the more I want to work on it. Continue reading »

Check Out the Winter 2021 TRAM Issue I Worked On!

Comment

As many of you know, here in Toyama, Japan I co-edit a cool indie zine called the TRAM—a.k.a. Toyama’s Random-Ass Magazine.  It’s a cool project that features writing and art from around the Toyama JET community and beyond, and we just released a new issue last Friday that you check out for free here.

(Fortunately because we put it out on March 19th, it’s still technically the Winter issue ;-)

This latest issue features a TON of cool art, a beginner’s guide to Japanese sake (which I found incredibly informative!), real-life misadventures from the Japanese dating scene, some Michelin-star restaurant recommendations from around Japan, and original prose and poetry.  Two pieces I was particularly proud to feature from outside the Toyama JET community were a photo set inspired by the movie Amelie by Japanese photographer Maplens and model Amy Davis, and an article about Naomi Osaka and mixed-race Japanese athletes we reprinted through a collaboration with AJET Connect magazine, which covers all of Japan.  Both required some networking on my part, and served as a cool way of flexing my editor muscles ;-) Continue reading »

There’s No Magical Line Between Famous People and Regular People

Comment

When I was a kid I thought famous people lived in a different world than regular people.  I figured that after Arnold Schwarzenegger made the first Terminator movie they issued him a special “I’m a Famous Person!” card that let him eat at special restaurants and fly out of private airports so he wouldn’t be mobbed by crazed fans on a daily basis.

I thought that fame, and the card that went along with it, made famous people like Arnold Schwarzenegger different than regular people—like he’d crossed a magical dividing line.

While elementary-school Ian was correct in that class stratification ensures that famous people (plus anyone with money) can live entirely different lives than the rest of us, the line between being Famous and being Not Famous isn’t that cut and dry.  (For starters, I’m pretty sure there’s no “I’m a Famous Person!” card…) Continue reading »

I’ve Become the Kind of Person Who Does Work in Coffee Shops and I’m OK With That

Comment

For most of my adult life, I had a shit-ton of debt and was chronically short on money, which meant that I cut back on unnecessary purchases as much as possible.  My thought process usually went like this:

 

[At the gas station]

Do I really want that can of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles?

Nah, I’ve got snacks at home.

 

[When Making Plans]

Do I really want to see the Blade Runner Final Cut rerelease in the theater with my friends on a fun outing that may or may not include costumes and also go out for pizza at a restaurant I really like where we’ll have a great time hanging out?

Hell yes. Continue reading »

Three Submissions a Month for Twenty Years: An Interview with Melanie Faith

2 Comments

Melanie Faith is a writer, editor, and teacher whose books about writing include In a Flash, Poetry Power, and Photography for Writers from Vine Leaves Press. She’s also the author of This Passing Fever from Future Cycle Press, a book of poetry set during the 1918 influenza epidemic; and Her Humble Admirer, a pseudonymous regency romance novel.  Her short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in over 250 publications, and she teaches online for Southern New Hampshire University and the WOW! Women on Writing program.  On top of all that, she’s a photographer whose work I’ve scattered throughout this interview.

Melanie’s also the developmental editor of my upcoming novel, MFA Thesis Novel, and after a few back and forth emails I realized she’d be a perfect person to interview about her creative work life…

Continue reading »

Why I Stopped Checking My Phone in the Morning

Comment

My phone is kind of the bane of my existence.  Like, I know it’s useful for staying in contact with people and finding stuff online and navigating strange areas and all that jazz, but there are times when the drawbacks definitely outweigh the benefits.

For example, there are plenty of times when I’m at home or on the train or waiting for someone and I instinctively pull out my phone to check…something.  Maybe it’s a new text, maybe it’s the news, or maybe it’s social media—in any case, that smartphone time is usually time I’d rather be spending doing something else, and I usually finish these screen-staring sessions feeling distracted and scatterbrained.

Oh yeah, and the more I use my phone, the more I want to use it—like I can’t just use it a little bit.

And I’ve been trying to find ways to control that. Continue reading »

Why Rest Matters – The Art of Rest with Claudia Hammond

1 Comment

I had my mind blown the other day listening to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Intelligence Squared.  The episode featured an interview with Claudia Hammond, author of the book The Art of Rest, which is exactly what it sounds like.

The discussion covered what rest does for us, and how it’s different than sleep.  When we rest, we’re disconnecting from all the things we have to do, and doing something simple or enjoyable instead, anything from daydreaming to taking a hot bath.  Hammond mentioned one really important aspect of rest that made me stop and think: if you’re feeling guilty about the thing you’re doing, it’s not restful.

When I heard that I realized I often feel guilty when I take time off to do restful things, whether it’s reading, spending time with friends, relaxing, taking a walk, or playing a video game.  There’s a voice in the back of my head that tells me what I’m doing is a waste of time and that I should be spending my time on something productive.  The guilt stops me from Continue reading »

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

1 Comment

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 »

Novel Progress Update: Let the Drafting Begin!

1 Comment

Lately I’ve been writing.

Like, not writing shorter pieces or book reviews or essays, but working on the actual new novel I blogged about researching but not yet starting a few months ago.  I’ve been working in larger chunks of 2-4 hours one or two days a week, which is a pretty good rate for me with all the things I have going on.  So far in 2021 I’ve set aside six of these writing sessions where I sat down at the computer completely free of distractions and just wrote, which also feels really good.

Now let’s get one thing straight: I’m not the kind of person who usually brags (or blogs) about his writing progress, especially in terms of word count—which is why I’m not posting my word count here.  I don’t post my word count because all too often it can come across as bragging—like the number of words someone puts down on the page are an indicator of their self-worth even if all those words suck hard.  Other writers can read that and feel discouraged and inferior that they aren’t producing the same number of words—I know because I’ve been there.

I once read an interview with the writer John Banville where he talked about sometimes spending an entire day getting a single sentence exactly the way he wanted it.  John Banville writes some pretty beautiful sentences, but the point is that Continue reading »