What Happened When My Entire Life Got Upended

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I’ve had a rough couple of months because of something REALLY bad that happened back in the fall.  At first I wasn’t sure how to talk about it online, or even if I wanted to reveal it because it involved my family.  Fortunately, though, the problem’s cooled way down in the past month, and in thinking about what a crazy time it’s been, I decided I wanted to write about it frankly and honestly.

What happened is a long and complicated story, so please bear with me while I explain some intricate details, simplify others, and leave a handful of moments vague to protect some people’s anonymity.

In telling this story, though, I want to share that 1) Sometimes really bad things happen that make it incredibly difficult to do creative work, and 2) Dealing with those problems, and ultimately solving them, is a vital skill.

Here’s the story: Continue reading »

Side Hustle Highlights: Language Teaching

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Last week I talked about my adjunct job mentoring students in an online MFA program, where I work with students during the Fall and Spring semesters to show them the ropes of what an editor does. It’s a cool job that pays decently, and it’s helped me grow as a teacher and professional while also helping me make some good contacts.

This week, though, I want to highlight two of my other side hustles: teaching English as a Second Language online, and teaching Japanese in person. Both are steady sources of income that help me sustain my freelance lifestyle, and both help me use my teaching skills in ways I find interesting and stimulating.

So, without further ado, here’s how the side hustle teaching game works:
Continue reading »

Side Hustle Highlights: Online University Teaching

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Somebody asked me the other day whether I was still teaching after I left my university job in Japan last year.  However, their actual question seemed to be Are you teaching full-time as your main job? which of course is a solid No.

I thought about the best way to answer, and finally replied with Yes, but not as my main job.

Whille I get most of my income from editing jobs these days, I worked as a teacher for a long time, first as a tutor and substitute teacher in New Hampshire, then at a private school in Japan, then in grad school teaching undergrad essay writing, then again in Japan.  I worked other jobs in between, of course, but over my working life I’ve definitely spent more time teaching than doing anything else.

Teaching is fun and interesting to me because I enjoy tackling the problem of how best to present material to students, and how to help them build their ideas in interesting ways.  The editing and coaching work I do uses a lot of those same principles as I help writers express their ideas in the fullest, clearest way possible, Continue reading »

The Freelance Life vs the Employee Life Part 2: The Drawbacks

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Last week I dove into the differences in mindset that separate freelance workers from regular full-time employees: things like how you view your job, how you schedule your time, and how you relate to coworkers. (If you missed that post, definitely check it out before you read this one!)

I had a lot to say (and the post title definitely grabbed people’s attention!), but I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the negative aspects of working for yourself as well, since it’s not all wine and roses.

Interestingly, when I talk to full-time employees about differences in our working lives, a lot of them are quick to point out the cons of self-employment, which they’ve clearly given a lot of thought to.  In some cases, though, I think they focus on the cons because they don’t know how they would handle them if they were working for themselves.

I recently heard an entrepreneur on a podcast say that even though starting a business in the internet age is easier and involves less risk than at any point in history, people still feel scared to try it.  That’s because they’re stuck in a pre-internet mindset, where working for yourself involves a lot of start-up capital and could cause you to lose everything Continue reading »

Here’s What I Got Done in 2022

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So I’ll admit, I’m a little behind on the blogging game: after taking some time off from writing and creative work for Christmas and New Years, I returned to But I Also Have a Day Job last week to write about my New Years Resolutions.

Thinking about the coming year also got me reflecting on the previous year and what I’ve been getting done (I made a similar post for what I got done in 2021 too).  In a lot of ways, 2022 was my biggest year ever as a writer, both in terms of accomplishments, and making positive life changes.  However, it’s easy for me to forget that when I’m busy or having a stressful time, which is why in this post I decided to list out my accomplishments for 2022.

In total, that list came out to 8 different accomplishments—and as much as I love Top Ten Lists in the David Letterman sense, it didn’t seem right to force two more in just for the sake of aesthetics.  It also didn’t feel right to put these accomplishments in order of importance, so instead I’ve listed them out chronologically to form a mini-story of what my creative work year looked like.

So without further ado, here’s what I got done in 2022… Continue reading »

A Short Reminder About What It Means to Prioritize Your Creative Work

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Sometimes I get stressed, worried, confused, or preoccupied with things that aren’t my creative work.  Or, I waste a lot of time that I could be using for creative work doing….things that aren’t creative work.

That’s because I often forget that doing creative work means prioritizing creative work over other things.

To be clear, I’m not talking about essential functions like food, sleep, or staying healthy.  I’m also not talking about maintaining relationships with friends, family, or significant others, which can bring us fulfillment in very important ways.

No, I’m talking about other things. Things that matter less than your creative work.

One trap I often fall into is thinking about things I’d like to have because because the people around me have them.  Or, I think too much about the life I’m “supposed” to have, rather than Continue reading »

How to Take Time Off On Your Own Terms

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One of the best perks about working in Japan was the incredible number of paid national holidays I had: 16 per year to be exact, and they were pretty evenly spaced so that almost every month had one.  Combine that with school vacations and slow periods when classes were out of session, and I had a pretty sweet yearly calendar with a lot of paid time off.

Now fast forward a year: I’m back in the States, where I divide my time between finishing my Secret New Novel and doing freelance editing work to keep the bills paid.  Much of my editing is flexible (as in, I can work on it when I want to), but I also do scheduled video calls with clients where we talk through issues they’re having.  Some weeks, all of this work combined can make for a pretty tight schedule.

This begs a really, really important question: How is someone working a schedule like mine supposed to take time off? Continue reading »

Reflections on Six Years of Blogging

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Hard to believe that I started working on the But I Also Have a Day Job blog six (!) years ago this week.  At this time in 2016 I was testing designs and playing with WordPress formatting while I drafted the very first posts on Day Job Basics, and from there, it was off to the races.

This blog represented a really big step for me: back in 2016, I’d finished grad school, was trying to sell one novel and finish another, and made a major life change by moving out of Nebraska, where I’d gone to grad school and stayed an extra year working in the Agriculture department.

I knew I had to start taking my writing more seriously and figuring out my next steps, and the But I Also Have a Day Job blog was a HUGE step in clarifying the direction I wanted to take my creative work and my life in general.  Before this blog, I didn’t have much of an online presence at all, had very little published work, and it felt like I was just barely starting out.

Fast forward to six years later, and I’m…pretty satisfied with how how far I’ve come.  I haven’t done as much as I’ve liked, but I’m overall Continue reading »

Giving Up The Dream…

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This week’s post is a really important one.  It’s also a difficult one for me to write, and might hit close to home for a lot of people.  So, fair warning.

When we grow up, we’re surrounded by images of what a friend of mine recently referred to as The Dream—an image of the way our lives are quote-unquote “supposed to” look like.

The exact specifications of The Dream will no doubt look different to everyone, but it usually goes something like this:

 

What is The Dream?

In the way of life I’m calling The Dream, the person has a stable, full-time job they can consistently work without fear of being laid off or having to change jobs.  Said job pays a salary that’s not only enough to live on, but enough to save for retirement and afford amenities of decent quality, including furniture, vacations, late-model cars, and consumer electronics.  The salary from said job also allows the person to buy a house that’s relatively new, relatively large, and has some amount of property (most often Continue reading »

5 Advantages of a Flexible Work Schedule

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A few weeks ago I shared my Awesome Work-From-Home Freelance Writer/Editor schedule and talked about how I structure my workdays in a way that makes sense to me.  Writing in the morning, handling email and admin around midday, and working on editing and marketing in the afternoon has helped me create a really useful workflow that makes me feel comfortable during my workday and get more done.

There are a ton of other advantages to being self-employed, of course: not having to deal with horrible bosses, navigate toxic coworker relationships, deal with pointless Day Job shit, or fight the pressure to care about your company when you really don’t.  Avoiding these downsides is pretty awesome, and it’s helping me feel better about my creative work/paid work balance.

One HUGE advantage, though, is that when you work for yourself, you have a flexible schedule.  That means you can schedule your own work when you want to, as long as it gets done Continue reading »

More Creative People Should Talk About How They Pay Their Bills: Notes on Stephen King’s “On Writing”

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When I started this blog waaaaaaaay back in 2016 I’d just gotten out of grad school, where my focus had been developing myself as a writer and honing my craft.  Back then, I’d been getting a lot of advice on how to be a writer: Write every day, write in the morning when you’re fresh, research agents who’ll want to read your work, find critique partners, revise multiple drafts, and so on.

If you were to follow all of this advice to the letter and make writing the focus of your life, it would certainly add up to more than a full-time 40-hour-a-week job—though no one ever came right out and said it like that.

My problem was that while aspiring writers were ostensibly developing their crafts over this 40-hour-a-week period, how were they supposed to be earning money?  Were they supposed to be independently wealthy, so they didn’t have to work?  Were they supposed to be working a part-time job?  Or were they not actually supposed to be devoting that much time to their craft, and carving out time on evenings and weekends instead? (And if they did it during their evenings and weekends, how would they find the time for family and friend relationships???)
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Bad Bosses Blame Their Employees for Mismanaged Workplaces

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A while back, I worked at a Day Job that was really, really busy.  While I was there the workload went up exponentially, though we only had a small increase in staff.  That meant we had slightly more people doing a LOT more work, which meant way more work for all of us.

During that extremely busy time, my boss dealt with the situation by checking in that we were constantly on task and not goofing off.  “Utilize your time well,” was her favorite phrase (complete with pretentious use of the word “utilize”), and she repeated it over and over at meetings.

Years later at a different Day Job, I experienced something similar.  At this particular Day Job I was responsible for waaaaaaaaaaay more work than a reasonable person could do in a 40-hour workweek, which led to a lot of stress and confusion.  To make matters worse, my boss often expected me to be in two places at once, and would regularly add extra tasks on to my already enormous workload.

This time, I tried explaining to my boss that there was simply too much work to do.  However, when I did, he always pivoted and said that I needed to manage my work better, stop wasting time, and learn to prioritize.  Continue reading »