The Day Job Blog

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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.

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 »

What Kinds of Workers Have to Get Overtime Pay?

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A few months back I wrote a piece about American overtime laws and how they set clear boundaries about what kinds of workers need to be paid time-and-a-half for any hours per week they work over forty.  These laws were enacted to 1)Create more jobs by giving employers incentive to hire more workers at the regular rate instead of paying their existing workers the time-and-a-half rate, and 2)To help workers maintain a better work-life balance, because working a lot of overtime sucks hard.

The rules are laid pretty clearly in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which I first learned about when my old job as a school secretary overloaded me with more work than I could possibly handle in a 40-hour workweek and I started doing some research.  While the 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 »

India Trip Reflections #2: Your Job Shouldn’t Define Your Status

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When I was in India, I found myself being asked the same three questions over and over:

  1. Are you married?
  2. How many brothers and sisters do you have?
  3. What is your job in America?

Now the answer to the first question was of course no (my response usually involved the phrase “haven’t found the right girl”) and my having two younger brothers was simple enough, but how to explain my work to people from an entirely different culture was a whole lot trickier.

In America, when I meet a new person and hear the “What do you do?” question, I judge based on the situation whether the person is Continue reading »

India Trip Reflections #1: Never Forget What a Break and Time Away Can Do

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At the beginning of this month I flew to India for ten days to attend a friend’s wedding and take a much-needed vacation.  It was my first trip abroad in two years, and I spent the time meeting new people, exploring rural Indian villages, experiencing farm life, and trying awesome new dishes made from amazing vegetables and the freshest butter and yogurt I’ve ever had.

Now I’m back, and I feel awesome.

I was pretty stressed out before I left because of too much Secret Office Day Job-related overtime and having a shit ton of things to do in general, but I guess I hadn’t realized 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 »

Guest Post – Life vs. Writing: A Balancing Act

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Angela D’Onofrio is a writer and artist whose series of novels takes place in the fictitious town of Aviario, Connecticut and contains elements of the fantastic (I reviewed one of her Aviario novels, In the Cards, a few weeks back). I met her through a local writer’s group, where I was struck by her dedication to promoting her projects and keeping an active role in her many, many creative communities.  Check out more of her work here, or follow her on Twitter at @AngDonofrio.

 

Hello, fellow writers with day jobs!  Ian approached me a little while ago and asked if I’d like to write a guest post for his blog.  “Sure,” I said, “but let’s do it after National Novel Writing Month, when I’ll be done writing my fingers off…”

Which brings us to the topic of this post: Life vs. Writing. For the past four years, I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo: a challenge to authors to write the first 50,000 words of a novel draft in a month.  As much as I’d love to be able to tell you that I pummeled my keyboard into submission…alas, Continue reading »

How the Republican Tax Bill Affects Grad Students (Spoilers: Not in a good way!)

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I don’t often talk politics on this blog because that’s not what it’s for, but in rare cases I come across a political topic like the Republican Tax Bill that affects not only creative people with Day Jobs, but all of us who don’t quite fit the Traditional Middle-Class Mold of going to college, getting a high-paying job, and working that high-paying job until retirement.

For the past few weeks President Trump’s been talking about a new tax bill that he and others have touted as a way to bring tax relief to the middle class, in addition to reducing paperwork and loosening restrictions on businesses to make them more competitive.  Though the exact rhetoric around the bill has been mixed, the White House has been careful to plant the seed that the bill isn’t designed to help the wealthy, and Continue reading »