A Step Toward "For Real"

Today, Wednesday, June 3, 2015, I am quitting my full time job as an engineer to more fully pursue fiction writing. Granted, I'm replacing my full time engineering job with a 24 hour/week contract engineering job, but still, it's a fairly big deal to me. This new working arrangement will give me two more full days per week to write, edit, and work on marketing my fiction. I sure hope it catches on, especially with the upcoming full length novel.

Besides, here's the deal: I'm not particularly interested in being an engineer anymore. Yes, I went to school for a LONG time to get my degrees, and I've worked engineering jobs for six and a half years now . . . but I'm just not that into it anymore. I'm not sure I ever was, to be honest. I was good at it, I think, but it doesn't hold a candle to the mind-flaming satisfaction I get from writing fiction . . . not even close. It's like eating a rice cake versus eating a smoking slice of deep dish pizza. There's just no comparison. Writing is something I look forward to waking up for. Cubicle farming and staring at math is not.

It's true that college and all the engineering stuff has gotten me to where I am now, and it's allowing me to have this opportunity, so I'm not knocking it. It pays the bills, for sure. Fiction writing doesn't . . . at least not yet. The world needs engineers, I realize. Lot's of them. So kids, go be engineers and scientists and doctors and technologists, because we need you. Maybe I'm being selfish thinking I can be more useful to society as a writer.

But you know what? (Perhaps this rhetorical question and following answer is an effort to convince myself that I'm not crazy/self-centered in what I'm doing). The world also needs writers. We need good, thoughtful writers that can leave a continuing legacy of human imagination. I hope - badly hope - to become one of those writers. It's my calling; I'm convinced - as convinced as I have been of nearly anything else. Maybe it's true that I suck at it now. Maybe I'll always suck at it. Only you, the reader, can tell me. (I have a nagging feeling that I don't suck, though, and that's part of what's pushing me.) Regardless, what I'm certain of is that I simply have to pursue it to the limits of my ability. I cannot look back on my life and regret having not gone after it. In the end it may not take off, but then again, it very well could. It's a bit of a gamble, but isn't everything that's worthwhile?

Now a bit of clichéd advice for those of you who like taking advice from sources that may or may not know anything at all: Do not pass up a chance at doing something you love, even if you are convinced that it probably won't work. It is only by trying that you will find out.