I came home on Thursday, looked at the kids and said, “I lost my job today, but We. Will. Be. Fine.” I believe that. In my head I keep hearing Sophie Dempsey from Jenny Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation saying, “Nothing but good times ahead.”
Of course, I channel Sophie a lot. She’s sort of my idol because in the face of all sorts of adversity, she keeps the family going and makes sure everything is all right.
Now, if you and a million of your friends buy The Heiress and Her Fake Fiancé , then everything would be okay, and I could continue to write and spend time with my kids. Those two things were sorely lacking while I was working the day job with the hour-long commute each direction.
People keep telling me, “You’ll bounce back.” “You’ll get something better than what you had.” “When one door closes, another opens,” and all sorts of other great sayings that we all tell someone when their life has just gone to hell and they’re wondering how on earth they’re going to make ends meet.
The thing is, I’m not stressed about this. I should be. I really should be. It’s not like I had a cushion. But at the end of the day, that job was making me miserable. The only issue now is, I don’t know what to do. I mean, obviously, assuming book sales don’t go through the roof, I need to find another day job.
But I don’t know what that job should look like. The problem tends to be that if you ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I’ll tell you a novelist. But until that makes enough to be the day job, I need something else. I have a lot of experience in a lot of varied areas due layoffs over the years. That gives me a lot of possible roads to go down, but I don’t really care which one I take because the day job is not my passion. I know. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Well, I work every day. I’m okay with that as long as I have time to follow my passion. And whatever I do, I give it my all. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m passionate about it. If my job is to make sure the stamp on your letter is perfectly straight, it will be. So I will look for a job that I simply don’t hate. If it involves writing, that’s good. That’s fun.
In the meantime, I guess I can’t complain about no more time to plot the next book, can I?
