The Day Job

I've been watching my daughter agonize over career paths. At 17, she thinks she would someday like to be a working violinist in a symphony, but as symphonies close across the country, those spots become harder and harder to come by. Me? I tend to tell her to go for it anyway, as job security has never been very important to me. (And for those of you pulling for her . . . she was accepted into the music program at the university she auditioned at . . . and they will put her name in for a scholarship. I am beyond delighted and she is thrilled. Thank you for your well wishes.)

Job security. Hmmm . . . . I once was fired from a day job. A little background. I was making a ridiculously low salary in publishing as an editor and left, briefly, for greener pastures in human resources. I got a job at a bank in H.R., and made a very, very nice salary--well more than double what I had made in publishing with bank holidays, great benefits, and I was out the door by 4:30 every day. All was well and good. I thought, "I have a day job, and when I go home, I can write." But the bank where I worked was a veritable Peyton Place. This was the free-wheeling 1980s, when money seemed to grow on trees at financial institutions. The bank president arrived around 10:00 and left for lunch every day--by limo--never to return. The VP of my department did pretty much the same (minimum three-hour lunch each day). His right-hand woman was single-handedly one of the most trecherous people I have ever encountered. Ever. She disappeared for hours-long lunches with a gaggle of secretaries each day--they'd go for massages and manicures on the bank's dime, and their being gone for so long thus meant the H.R. people (a.k.a. me, the corporate recruiter) had to cover the phones--in a manner such that I and the other two recruiters couldn't have lunch except at our desks. She and her secretaries all smoked . . . and apparently, it would take them an hour or more to smoke one cigarette TOGETHER. So they would be gone for an hour, pop back in for a few minutes . . . and leave again. Departments were full of employees sleeping with each other, and not a few bottles of vodka were stored in top right-hand drawers. Add to that whiffs of racism and classicism in who they wanted hired as tellers . . . and I knew I wouldn't last in such an ugly place. And I was right. My bad attitude got me fired . . . and I have to say, when the bank folded two or three years later, when the president was fired and the whole house of cards fell down, a victim of the era's excesses, I was delighted. Karmically, I know it's not nice to delight in others' failure, but I was a weaker person then. And the fact is, the firing bothered me a LOT for years afterwards. I was always a success--from scholarships to GPAs, always did well. I did my job well. So how could I be fired by such dishonest people?

And it was my father who set me straight. "Who gives a cr*p about a bank job? My God, take it as a COMPLIMENT that you are honest enough and bright enough that you annoy the sh*t out of them."

And when, years later, I realized I couldn't--just couldn't--put my kids in daycare . . . and I am NOT denigrating the people who do . . . I just didn't have it in me to do so after my second child was born, and I decided to try to freelance edit full time from home and leave my publishing job, I was terrified. But my father told me, "Jobs? They're a dime a dozen. There IS NO JOB SECURITY anywhere. So if you don't make enough editing, you can bartend again. And if you have to one day take a day job again, you'll find a new day job. Go for it." So I leaped in with both feet, tripled my salary as an editor at that time, and have never looked back.

Do I work more hours than most people who have an outside-the-home job? Yeah. But have I ever regretted it? Nope. The lack of a safety net makes me work harder. I'm not rich by a long shot . . . but I have been the primary breadwinner for 10 years. Solely from fiction for 5. So it can be done.

And for me, not having that safety net pushed me harder. And I didn't have the safety net of a spouse who could support us either. And there's SIX of us. So . . . yeah, it's not the choice for everyone, but it was for me. And I've always had editing and freelance writing to fall back on if I needed . . .

And I've also decided that I don't know if I would have the ENERGY to pursue fiction after a long day at the office. I just don't think I would.

So tell me? Work a day job? Made the leap? Don't want to make the leap because you like the day gig? Afraid? Working up courage? Long-term goal? Do tell.