The day (and night) job has been interfering a little with my writing and blogging over the last few days. That’s not unexpected — biglaw is a demanding mistress (and she beats me, too). I assume smalllaw is equally demanding, in its own way, but I’ve never worked on that side of the street, so I have no idea.
Last night I had a networking event to go to and got home too late to write. The night before, I was cruising along on the novel when I made the mistake of checking my Blackberry, and saw 20 new messages, all received after 8pm, on one of my cases where something had happened. The next day, it turned out to be insignificant, but it killed my concentration for the evening.
So I’m still working the day job, which is just as well since my total earned income from writing is zero, at least since college (I had a paid, part-time job writing news briefs and the local events calendar for a newspaper in high school, and I may have gotten a small stipend as an editor at the college newspaper; if so, it was small enough that I don’t remember it). The day job, as day jobs do, has its own demands, and that’s the way it should be; it’s why they pay me. That’s the gig, and it’s not a bad one. It just interferes with the writing sometimes.
Would I quit the day job even if Meet the Larssons sold a gazillion copies and was made into a summer blockbuster movie starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson? The Mrs. thinks I wouldn’t, or that I’d go bananas if I did. I’m not so sure, but I’d like to find out, if anyone wants to test me.
The Unfocused Life 
You’re a lawyer working for biglaw, I’m a software developer working for biginternetcompanydoesn’tstartwithaG. Time is always a scarce and valuable commodity.
It’s hard sometimes to quit your job no matter what, because one becomes vested in the career path. For me, it also gives a lot of structure to my day. I have often wondered what it would be like to have a non-traditional job of much money. You’d have to make your own structure….
I’m not in any danger of quitting the day job anytime soon, not with a mortgage and two kids in school. The writing is a fun and interesting sideline, but unfortunately, at this stage of the game it is still very much a sideline.
I hear you. Definitely about the mortgage. Wowee.
(Yes, I got my first one some months back. WoWEE.)
I’ve tried the quitting my job and working from home and I realize now that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Like Arachne, having a job that I have to get up and dressed to go to structures my day. If you’re a structured person, it works well. If you’re susceptible to seeing the sun shining in your window and having overwhelming urges to be out in it, it doesn’t work so well!