I'm not sure I like the new contract that the client has already assumed I'll accept. However, it occurs to me that the strengths others need and draw from me may not always be the ones I want to exercise. It has already occurred to me that by not answering the question someone was presumptuous about not asking, I left myself some room to move. There is no law that requires me to accept a fait accompli.
I'm one of the lucky few in that I knew what I wanted to do when I was 9: write. I also grew up in the period where "do what you love" was almost an article of faith, where people had grown tired of having to take "any job" to put food on the table, and work was something like punishment for pay, an industrial form of BDSM: nudity optional, and climaxes measured in little teaspoons of glee and sniggering allotments of win/lose transactions.
Still, I found a way to write through that. Letters, diaries, poem slips littering any number of professional books. Farewell memoes.
Then I found my first calling. My second. My third.
Now I find myself at a tipping point, maybe: earn enough to be able, perhaps, to take some time off afterwards. To ask myself, what would I write, if I could write anything?
And if I could write something, and was happy with it, what markets exist for it?
Kin to that is my current tagline: Mage. Sage. Revolutionary. Comes from yet another online quiz about what kind of <strike>herd animal</strike> employee I am. The quiz discovers that I believe in my ability to change things (I do, and I have). It says I am thoughtful and deep. (I am, and I am.) And it says that I upend things (I do, and I have, and I will; whether I mean to or not).
What does a deep, thinking person with a knack for systemic change write? Crap, to begin with; no one escapes that, no matter how good they may wonder if they are.
It's easier to change a corporation than to face a creative page, for me. However, I've been challenged to start collecting rejection slips.
The I Ching says, Contemplate your life.
I contemplate the fact that there's still food to be put on the table.
I'll take the job. There's a lot to be gained and maintained by behaving responsibly in this: I have my survival income. I uphold my family.
And while that is happening, I make the plans that will buy me a spot with some like-minded others in a colony, to start making the things that will make me rejected. And a better writer.
Maybe I will find out that a job may not love me back, but a personal passion can sustain me through an unrequited love--or even industrial, bureaucratic BDSM. Let the good times roll! And the assembly lines with them.
I'm one of the lucky few in that I knew what I wanted to do when I was 9: write. I also grew up in the period where "do what you love" was almost an article of faith, where people had grown tired of having to take "any job" to put food on the table, and work was something like punishment for pay, an industrial form of BDSM: nudity optional, and climaxes measured in little teaspoons of glee and sniggering allotments of win/lose transactions.
Still, I found a way to write through that. Letters, diaries, poem slips littering any number of professional books. Farewell memoes.
Then I found my first calling. My second. My third.
Now I find myself at a tipping point, maybe: earn enough to be able, perhaps, to take some time off afterwards. To ask myself, what would I write, if I could write anything?
And if I could write something, and was happy with it, what markets exist for it?
Kin to that is my current tagline: Mage. Sage. Revolutionary. Comes from yet another online quiz about what kind of <strike>herd animal</strike> employee I am. The quiz discovers that I believe in my ability to change things (I do, and I have). It says I am thoughtful and deep. (I am, and I am.) And it says that I upend things (I do, and I have, and I will; whether I mean to or not).
What does a deep, thinking person with a knack for systemic change write? Crap, to begin with; no one escapes that, no matter how good they may wonder if they are.
It's easier to change a corporation than to face a creative page, for me. However, I've been challenged to start collecting rejection slips.
The I Ching says, Contemplate your life.
I contemplate the fact that there's still food to be put on the table.
I'll take the job. There's a lot to be gained and maintained by behaving responsibly in this: I have my survival income. I uphold my family.
And while that is happening, I make the plans that will buy me a spot with some like-minded others in a colony, to start making the things that will make me rejected. And a better writer.
Maybe I will find out that a job may not love me back, but a personal passion can sustain me through an unrequited love--or even industrial, bureaucratic BDSM. Let the good times roll! And the assembly lines with them.
