Writing as a day job

For as long as I’ve known about writing as a day job, It’s always seemed out of reach to me. Specifically, if it’s not fiction stories, people are looking for technical writing. I don’t have any formal training in much of anything. I don’t have expertise. What I have is my experiences. And my experiences have been limited in terms of raw data: in no particular order, I’ve had one “regular” job as an associate at a pet store; one seasonal job in which I worked at a haunted house for two separate seasons; a kiosk job where I was making under-the-table money; an usher in the house of an amphitheater, the same place where I worked at the haunted house. The most recent job I had I left in 2014.

But I had no real world experience to speak of. I’ve had a lot of days where my mental health was at a pretty low point. Indeed, those moments began to blur into one giant blob. It became a theme, I felt, in my life. And then I started to wonder if I just had this thing called depression. Keep in mind, this is not something I’ve ever had a clear-cut diagnosis for. So this is all purely speculation based on experience. Even the therapist I saw could merely make an educated guess.

When you think of a “job”, though, you think of it as mundane. Some of those jobs I held were mundane, yes. One or two, not as much. But they were still jobs. But, as often is the case, those jobs didn’t fulfill me. Cue the idea of Professional Writing as a Job. I’m not here to sell anyone anything. I’m not here to convince you to take up the profession of a technical writer. If you have a bonafide expertise in something, I’d look into it. But I won’t tell you that I want you to go and look it up, and then do it. Make that decision for yourself. I’d heard about it off and on for a long time, but as I said, I didn’t think I was capable of it.

Then a friend turned me onto the idea of copywriting, a specifc element to it that I’d also heard of. This time, however, I had literally no idea what it was. I still find it really difficult to grasp, but basically it seems like freelance work, specifically done for companies. I’m really interested in it, but I have a long way to go before I can say I feel like I’ve learned about it. Again, I’m not trying to sell anyone on the idea, especially since I barely know what to do with the idea. And when I learn more about this, I’ll make a post about it in more detail.

I have known since I was very small that I wanted to be a writer. I wrote in secret, with no real understanding that I wanted to do this for a living. I didn’t begin in earnest until 2005. I’m talking with the determination to actually get published and make a sincere go of it. And I certainly didn’t call myself a Writer until quite recently. My interest never wavered, but my drive and ability all did their fair share of it. It became a slow dive, an Olympic swimmer’s run-through played in super slo-mo, bobbing up and down, up and down. When a swimmer comes up for air for that 1 second, there must be the greatest sense of relief, unconsciously. That was where I was. Moments of great relief dominated by lots of time to sit and ponder, and dread the trajectory of my life.

But writing deserves to be given more credit than the mainstream media gives. You write, usually, with the intention of saying something that you then put out into the world. Ideally, something in the range of thousands of pairs of eyeballs will come across your book, and that will be the start of something beautiful. This is not something to scoff at. It’s a job. It’s a business. Obviously, the ones watching the money feel the same way. So why has the consciousness of America today been allowed to believe it is okay to all but dismiss a person for their talents as a writer? It never made sense to me.

Either way, there are multiple avenues to explore, when it comes to writing. I don’t have an expertise in anything, but I know that this world is a lot more open to people like myself than I had anticipated. This is partly my fault, due to never exploring what this world has to offer. Then my friend made a post on Facebook about it, and since I want to help her out in her endeavors however I can, I told her I would sign up. It turns out there’s a LOT to this. I’m excited, though. And that’s the point. I’m excited about writing again, about its opportunities, doors waiting for me to knock on.