Today, at work, we celebrated the contributions of an associate who is leaving the company. I'm sad to have not been able to get to know him much since I've only been with the company for 10 weeks. And for 6 of those weeks, I didn't really get to work with him. While I was going through my on-boarding process, he was taking his multi-week vacation. And it's not a remarkable thing that he's leaving the team and the company. In his 10-year tenure at the company, he's switched positions at least once as part of his professional growth. Life happens and there comes a point when everyone has to make a decision.
What is truly remarkable is his reason for leaving. He is a writer at heart and he's leaving his well paying, excellent benefits package, full time position to dedicate to his writing. He and his wife are packing things up and moving to the Oregon coast so that he can attend workshops and work on his first full-length novel, aiming for 500K words written and published in the next 3 years (while living off of savings and his wife's supplemental etsy income). I admire him for his courage and drive to pursue this dream. He also plans to self publish and write as much as possible.
(He also gave me this reference, as it inspired him to go through the self publishing route and just go for quantity of work. http://www.deanwesleysmith.com. I've yet to check it out, nor have I read and of Smith's work, so I've not garnered an opinion yet).
Besides the steady paycheck that funds a comfortable Los Angeles lifestyle, he's giving up (or delaying) home ownership. He and his wife have been saving up for a down payment on a house. Now, instead of getting the house, they'll be investing that money on his writing career. The cost of living in Oregon is apparently really low compared to L.A and will allow them to stretch their dollars.
As much as I admire him, I don't think leaving LA is my cup of tea. I do understand how awesome it would be to immerse oneself into writing. My experience doing Nano taught me that. In addition to being a writer, I've always wanted a level of security and independence that comes from earning a steady paycheck. My husband and I are in the midst of purchasing our own home, (thus achieving one of our life goals) and we have a very large, ever growing circle of friends. It doesn't seem like there's ever enough time on the weekends to connect with everyone we want to connect with.
I know a lot of writers juggled a job that earned money and writing. And I can't say I don't have the time. Truth is, I spend quite a few hours a night, every night, watching TV or consuming fluff on the internet. So starting tomorrow, I'm going to buckle down. One TV episode allowed per night, and only after I'd managed to get in a few pages of writing. Blog posts will count for the first 2 weeks. Starting tomorrow, for the next 30 days, I'll attempt a NaNo paced marathon to writing whatever. It may turn out to be a coherent piece of work. It may turn out to be nothing. But I'll be writing.
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