{"id":310,"date":"2016-08-28T14:07:03","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T18:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/?p=310"},"modified":"2016-08-28T14:07:03","modified_gmt":"2016-08-28T18:07:03","slug":"the-day-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/?p=310","title":{"rendered":"The Day Job"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My father does not believe in me as a writer. Whenever I call him, he never asks me, &#8220;So how&#8217;s the book selling? How&#8217;s the new book going?&#8221; It&#8217;s always, &#8220;You still have a job?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My day job has nothing to do with me being a writer. It is a mindless drone-like task that Koko could do. Not in any way challenging.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m planning on changing my day job, to finally take that step up the career ladder.I&#8217;ve been there for 9 years and have been insulted to show for it. So I&#8217;ve been trying to get at other positions, mostly in the writing and editing fields. I&#8217;ve tried inside and outside of my company. No dice.<\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s my dilemma: do I take a job that will eat away my writing time, and possibly my creative spirit, or do I stay in a mindless job that doesn&#8217;t sap my creative ability?<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, most of us writers have a day job, and the ones that don&#8217;t are lucky. Either there&#8217;s a spouse working so they can keep the writing life, or they&#8217;re selling that many books &#8211; and living much more simply &#8211; than I am. Do I want to make this a real job?<\/p>\n<p>I keep telling people no, because I need inspiration for my characters. But my real reason is that I&#8217;m not disciplined enough. On my weekends, I want to write, but do I really? I did yesterday. Haven&#8217;t today, not even in my journal. I write when I&#8217;m pressured: during my lunch, 5 minutes before leaving for work, waiting during doctors&#8217; appointments. \u00a0If given two hours, or even days, I find something else to do other than write.<\/p>\n<p>Sleep is a big thing, actually. Game is second. Writing&#8230;yeah, I think about it a lot, but I&#8217;m not consistent. If I get this new day job, I&#8217;ll be very inconsistent, and my muse will be upset. Because writing will no longer be the big thing in my life, but just something I do when I get a chance.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Appearances:<\/p>\n<p>September 10, Narragansett Meet and Greet 10 a.m-3 p.m. Narragansett Theatre by the Sea.<\/p>\n<p>Will have <em>Homecoming<\/em> books, and <em>Best Intentions<\/em> under the table. Also testing out my &#8220;attract money&#8221; spell. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My father does not believe in me as a writer. Whenever I call him, he never asks me, &#8220;So how&#8217;s the book selling? How&#8217;s the new book going?&#8221; It&#8217;s always, &#8220;You still have a job?&#8221; My day job has nothing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/?p=310\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-sucks","category-promotion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}