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I am not My Job
Don’t let your self-esteem be tied to your vocation.
During my working career I worked at a number of menial, mindless jobs. The nice thing about that is many times I could do those jobs while on mental auto-pilot. To fill the void, I would work on gags and jokes for cartoonists and comedians.
One of those jobs was working as a custodian for the state of Oklahoma. That job was as mentally taxing as it sounds. What could have been a mind-numbingly dull job was salvaged in part, by keeping my mind active on something I enjoyed.
I thought of the custodian job as supporting my writing career. It was like the state of Oklahoma was giving me a base salary and insurance while I was writing.
Of course, I don’t think that would work at for all types of writing. I can’t imagine cleaning a toilet is conducive to writing a romantic novel. Writing bathroom jokes for Mother Goose and Grimm, yes, romantic novel, no. Actually I literally wrote a number o bathroom gags that sold to Mother Goose and Grimm. Inspiration is where you find it.
After I left my job with the state of Oklahoma I went on to be a sales rep for AAA Oklahoma. It proved to be a nice job, requiring a little more mental energy than being a custodian. I enjoyed the job and worked there for 11 years, but the trade-off was I did a lot less writing during that time…
