[Ipg-smz] Thoughts on a Career Pause

[Tara Calishain]

Last fall I left a job which ate my life for a dozen years. 60-80 hour
weeks (unpaid overtime), difficult work, no support from higher-ups. Nine
years without a vacation. Three years with no days off (and I don't mean I
worked five days a week. I mean I worked seven days a week for three
years.) I won't even tell you about sleeping in a warehouse five days a
week for four months.

It's been almost seven months since I left and I feel like I'm only
starting to feel human again. Sometimes when I go outside and realize I
have nobody breathing down my neck to get things done, I cry.

I have been looking around in a desultory way for work, and did get a
columnist job at The Saturday Evening Post. Then David Strom (bless him
forever) hooked me up with a newsletter job for Inside.com. The pay does
not knock my socks off, but it's a good base with my column job, Saturday
Evening Post, Patreon, and freelancing.

I will pitch and write articles (please think of me if you need something
done), but other than that I am not hustling. I have made the deliberate
choice to go into a lower gear for a couple of years.

During that time I plan to:

-- Exercise regularly, cook better, and lose some weight.

-- Learn to draw. I'm not a visual person and I want to better that part of
me.

-- Learn Spanish, because when I was in high school I took German like a
knucklehead. (Nothing against German people, but there's a ton of people
around here who speak Spanish.)

-- Spend much time with my 95-year-old Granny and do things that make her
happy. (These include finding instruction manuals for old cooking devices,
burning 80 episodes of "The Old Fashioned Revival Hour" to a CD, and
sharing funny dog videos.)

-- Write fiction, because my mother keeps telling me to.

-- Goober around a little with ResearchBuzz.

It's going to take me a long damn time to stop apologizing for not working
40 hours a week, but I don't care. I haven't been a happy person since I
was nine years old, but I want to try to be once more before I die.

Go for it.

Tara


On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 11:04 AM Liam Kelly <ljkelly1888 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> I'm thinking to leave my position as editor of a crypto-centric blog to
> pursue a few different options.
>
> Likely I won't find anything as well-paid as this for a few months, but
> I've been at this publication for a few years now and I have the impression
> it's time for a bit of progress.
>
> The idea is to leave editing to the side and gather as many bylines as
> possible in hopes of landing a staff position at a larger publication.
>
> But I was curious about a few things:
>
> - If not writing, what other skills would *you* develop during a similar
> break?
> - Am I crazy to leave a position in which I'm paid a flat rate to both
> write and edit?
> - And, finally, any general thoughts on some personal experiences related
> to this subject.
>
> I've got savings, a handful of smaller clients that I've been working
> with, and a dreadful feeling of stagnation. All of this has culminated in
> this plan.
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions, relevant stories, and/or links to
> things I should read before making the "leap."
>
> Best,
>
> Liam J. Kelly
> --
> Ipg-smz mailing list
> Ipg-smz at netpress.org
> http://netpress.org/mailman/listinfo/ipg-smz_netpress.org
>
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