I recently ripped through a book about writing called DO Quit Your Day Job by Christina F. York, a writer who tried to devote her newly earned retirement to the creative life, with mixed success. She has good things to say about making time in your day to create. (She is the one who found the quote, “Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only,” by Clarissa Pincola Estes, which I riffed off the other day.)
She writes ruefully about being sucked back into the day job she’d retired from, when her former colleagues started floundering and needed her expertise back.
It’s a story not unlike my own; I was lured back into a day job when my own local news site and publishing efforts were embryos, the added responsibilities finally forcing the fadeout of the news site. Like most people, I let the lure of a steady paycheck drown the entrepreneurial spirit.
As she finished the book she was still tied to the day job, but she finished the book! So the creative life is possible after retirement, and York proves the creative life is also possible while juggling a day job.
But the title of the book IS DO Quit Your Day Job, so she has a strong opinion on that subject. While the book has a strong appeal to a guy like me who’s at about the same age and place as this author, I think it has a lot to say to anyone who is thinking about shucking the day-job mentality for a life as a full-time artist.
