the worst, coolest, most amazing, terrible idea of my life!

Okay, folks. This post is a bit of a whirlwind, because my life has been a bit of a whirlwind of late. The time for drastic measures to be taken is overdue. I am thus making a huge decision, along with Emily, while officially stepping into pursuing: The worst, coolest, most amazing, terrible idea of my life!!

So, where to begin?

I had the job at Java Bean, and it was one of the most toxic environments I’ve ever had the misfortune to operate in. After a few short months, I quit, to find work elsewhere. The plan was that I would spend the time it took to find new work writing full-time. Instead, before having a chance to catch my breath, I got called to interview for a job I never even officially applied for, working 8-5 every day at the UW School of Dentistry. Emily and I both knew that it would be a risky move to accept that job, because my insomnia-ridden, depressed mind probably couldn’t handle working those sorts of hours at a job I didn’t like. However, upon getting offered the job I accepted, because it just seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.

Big mistake. Word from the experienced: if you are an insomniac diagnosed with ‘Major Depression’ of a chronic nature, don’t accept a job sitting in a depressing, windowless room for 9 hours a day moving charts around a dental clinic and telling people who call in that they owe you 32 bucks for access to their own dental records. Bad idea. Even though I really like the ladies I worked with, I hated the job and that caught up with me, contributing to the end of Cymbalta’s limited effectiveness in my body and destroying my ability to function.

It really was a blessing in disguise that I got fired, because I really did desperately hate that job so much. However, even though Emily kept telling me I should leave, I couldn’t bring myself to admit defeat, because I couldn’t bear willingly failing at two jobs in a row. It was too much for me. It made me feel like I was going to fail at everything, failing out of two jobs in such a short period of time. Well, I still failed out of two jobs, but the whole thing was taken out of my hands altogether because my boss’s boss was a dick and fired me without giving me a fair chance to explain what was going on.

The day that I got fired I texted my friend Eric to see if he could help me get a job at his coffee shop, because they are opening a new location here in Ballard. It looked like things were falling together for that to be my new job, less than a week after getting fired from UW. But, then I had the insane interview that I wrote about the other day, and I was left at square one.

All this time, I kept having this nagging thought in my head that maybe I should stop talking about writing as a pipe dream, and make a really stupid commitment to live off of savings for six months so that I could write full time, trying to finish a novel and build up other writing experience so that I actually have a portfolio to speak of.

This nagging idea moved back to the forefront of my mind again when I had the terrible interview, so I finally decided to bring it up with Emily to see what her thoughts were. A big part of me assumed that she would offer some perspective as to why that was a really stupid idea, but maybe also offer a compromise where we could do something similar but a lot less insane. Instead, her response when I shared my idea was, “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, too.”

Well, things came together pretty quickly after that. We talked to the moms. We did our best to talk each other out of it. And, at the end of that process, we’re doing it. For the next six to nine months, I am going to dedicate all of my time and energy to writing.

The various writing I am going to try to do are:

1. I’m writing a novel. It’s called The Last Guardian. I have a general outline for the story, my three main characters, and a prologue that has come a long way in the last two weeks, going from mediocre, to becoming something over the last few days that I am actually really getting excited about.

2. I’ll be trying to blog much more often, with actual writing as opposed to just posting random videos and stuff. I’ll still be posting random videos and stuff, but I want to be writing more in the really informal setting I enjoy here at RtM. This will also include trying to pump some essays out to send to various online publications that will at least get my name out there.

3. I have several avenues I am pursuing through friends, where I will offer my writing services for free, or close to free, so that I can get some more legitimate writing projects under my belt. That way, by the time this is all over, hopefully I can apply for a writing job and actually get it, while also building relationships with people who can help me keep work coming in steadily. I’ll also probably try and take a grant writing class so that I can officially pursue that avenue of employment as well.

Anyway, there you have it. The worst, coolest, most amazing, terrible idea of my life. I’m getting over being really sick the last few days, but I’m still really excited about this! I hope some of you will come along for the ride!