So I decided to start a semi-personal blog — the kind I actually put my real name on and invite people to read, rather than just spewing unbidden into the Internet abyss — because, according to my very limited research (i.e. cyber-stalking the people I now work with), that seems like the thing you do if you’re a professional writer. Which I am now. So they tell me.
It was still weird to see it there, in print, on the renter’s insurance invoice (also, renter’s insurance! See how good I am at this adulthood thing?) — OCCUPATION: WRITER. I mean, yeah, I’d said it to the girl on the phone and it was obviously going to be on the form. Then again, she did spell my first name “JAMMIE,” so maybe WRITER floating up at me from that PDF is still the small miracle it feels like. I went in and changed my misspelled name (why do I care?), but I still get emails from Allstate with “DEAR JAMMIE” at the top. Also they won’t respond to my requests for information on hurricane coverage.
Anyway, at least now there’s written proof that I get to call myself a writer without blushing. Even though I still do. Blush.
I feel more like a writer now than I did when I was (briefly) in grad school for creative writing, although my acceptance letter was my license to start using the title. Like most creatives, I’ve always been (read: still am) possessed of a deep skepticism as pertains to my own talent and relevance. But I’d played with telling people I wrote poems in places like airport bars — places where I knew pretty much for a fact I’d never see those people again. It probably helps that my paychecks are no longer laughable. Indeed, they’re more than double what I was “making” while I slaved as a TA. It’s funny, though, that the writing I’m doing now is probably what a lot of folks in academia would call derivative. Maybe even selling out. Do people still say that? I’m not sure I’d even disagree with them, but guess what: I’m not starving, and I’m not teaching freshmen in college, and both of those things are worth selling out for.
And by the way, I’m still writing poems. I actually find that my poem-writing time is much more productive, in part because I have less of it. I spend less time jotting down one-off lines and more time following those lines to their conclusion, because they usually don’t come to me when I’m occupied at work and when they do come, I’m probably free, and I know my best chance of getting the poem is to let the thing get down whole as soon as it comes. So even though I’d say I’m doing poetry-writing less overall, I’ve written a decent number of finished poems in the past couple of months, and they’re of a pretty consistent quality.
Hell, I even have one coming out in a journal. A real one. And I’m trying to submit with some consistency — at least once a month — and I’m exploring other genres, too. Writing for a blog hasn’t killed my creativity. If anything, it’s lending me skills I’ve long tried to hone unsuccessfully. Well, discipline, mostly. Start the thing, finish the thing. That was always impossible. Now it’s my job, and I’ve been able to transpose that into my creative work.
Also, — and this is me gushing a little — I actually adore my job. The space is beautiful and innovative. There are couches in sunlight-filled rooms with glass walls. There’s a beer fridge and a shuffleboard table. The people are smart and insightful — maybe smarter and more insightful than I am, and definitely more experienced. Both of the other writers on the team have been freelancing and writing ebooks and being online badasses for years, which makes me feel even more like I somehow walked into a career pre-made for me, whole cloth. It isn’t like I didn’t work hard, but I wasn’t quite in this field.
But I still feel like I fit in with my peers, and we’re actually friends — like the go-get-drunk-and-dance-on-Halloween kind. We all share this job in common as something that came at the exact right time — and I think that everyone is really, deeply happy. Bone happy. The work is challenging and engaging and enjoyable. I still have no idea how I landed it, and really, how I grew up all of a sudden.
This led me to an interesting conversation a few days ago. I was at work and talking to a friend via Gchat. I said:
How have I been here five hours already? It doesn’t feel that way at all.
And he said:
I’m glad your day is going by quickly.
And I thought, whoa. I get it, I do. Because generally, that’s what we all want: for our work days to go by so we can get home and be who we really are.
But isn’t that sad? Isn’t that some truly dark shit? We’re alive for a limited time. We should want to take advantage of every single second of it, want to be truly present for every single second of it. So I said so, and the conversation spun off into possible problems of modernity and the industrialized workforce, digital media proliferation creating low-hanging “entertainment” we can zonk out in front of — bread and circus, et cetera — but regardless of the reason, the fact is that most people don’t like their jobs and don’t see a way out. Hell, lots of people wouldn’t have the option to get out, even if they knew how.
The very best thing I can say about my job is that I still feel like me while I’m there. I’m not saying I never look forward to five o’clock, but there’s no hard split between who I am at home and who I am in the office, and that’s pretty amazing.
Anyway. This has been kind of a lot about kind of a little, but if you’re here, I’m glad you’re here. I know you’re probably not, though, because another thing I have figured out from my “research” is that I definitely do not have a readership at this stage in the game. (But neither does anybody. Right? Right?)
I also know that if I want to obtain a readership, I’m going to need to give this blog some kind of overarching theme, but since I know a little bit about a lot of things and everything about nothing, that’s probably not going to happen, especially because I almost certainly won’t make any money from this blog.
So welcome to me spinning my wheels about things like trying vegetarianism without eating bread or pasta, or spamming you with photos of my dog, or trying to say things about travel and sexuality and being a woman.
Really, I’m glad you’re here.