My New Day Job and What It Means for My Writing

In the fourth grade, I spent my time watching anime and reading books. Naturally, during a time when the internet moved at a snail's pace and having no mobile phone, my hobby was creating my own little comic books. I made it with a pencil and a filler notebook. If I had enough money saved for the next comic book, my readers would find it on a spiral notebook drawn with a nice pen from the stationary store.

At that point, my desire to write stories (never mind if I illustrated them or not) began to bud. Fast forward to 23 years later, I now consider myself a writer, but maybe not precisely the kind that my 11-year-old counterpart had pictured.

My boomer of a professor who taught the very first literature class I had in college gave "sage" advice to the would-be writers in the class: "If you want to be a writer, marry well."

I didn't know what to think of it at that time. Today, I think breaking these young writers' dreams with that kind of condescension was rude. At least break our dreams with honest reality, "if you want to be a writer, keep your day job."

That is the advice I have gotten from fellow writers and the same advice I will give to aspiring writers now that I'm in the game.

Unless you've written the next great American novel, got a six-figure deal for your manuscript, and have joined the ranks of the authors that people can name at the top of their heads, "if you want to be a writer, keep your day job."

Hey, even some famous authors had day jobs while writing! Ann Rice worked in insurance, John Grisham was a plumber, and Octavia Butler kept several odd jobs while she toiled on her novels in the evenings.

If you read my blog from four(?!) months ago, I got laid off from my dream job of writing and illustrating children's books. Who could say that creating books was my day job at one point in my life? Although the rights belonged to someone else, and they had the liberty to change my story to match their product, the position had me pitching, writing, illustrating, designing, lay-outing, and the whole nine yards of building a book from the ground up. I had about eight books to my name with them, an award for co-illustrating, and many other books where I served in production.

It was also a way for me to practice my craft to be better at creating personal projects. From there, I self-published a picture book and worked with other indie writers as an editor. I've also been working on a novel, which, to be honest, I have neglected writing for a while. But that's because I was unemployed: anxious about my job hunt, depressed, and unmotivated to create.

My job hunt mindset during this time was that if I could find myself in another writing job or anything writing-adjacent, I'd take it. I worked as an essay editor, a web content writer, and a freelance copywriter. I'm also no stranger to the willingness to find a job that's not creating. I've worked as an ESL instructor, Pre-K teacher, and a front desk assistant. I've never worked in retail or food service, but it was something that I avoided applying to as much as possible. Although I did get a rejection letter from an outdoor apparel store I wanted to work in! Hah!

I was also not above applying for entry-level positions since it didn't matter anymore in the current job market. Most job posts consider 2-3 years of experience as "entry level." Despite my work experience and being more than qualified for mid-level to senior positions, I rarely got a callback or a request for an interview. Out of the 139 jobs I have applied for since September 2023, I have had about nine interviews.

After months of looking for full-time employment, I finally landed a new job. It's not writing or illustrating, but I'm still in the same education/literacy industry but in the non-profit sector this time.

I'm unsure how I landed the job, and I'm not trying to brag. When I saw the position, I tried to check some boxes where I could fit. It had the words "web content" on the title (which I thought was more like web copywriting and I had some working knowledge about), it was an actual entry-level job (0–1-year experience), and it was for managing the organization's websites using a CMS (which I had some experience because I manage this website and previously managed my family's small business website using WordPress). I applied when I saw the listing and expected not to hear back.

When I got a call for an interview, I was elated. After our initial interview and when I found out more about the scope of the job, I knew I could do it, even if it was something other than my expertise. But then, out of nowhere, imposter syndrome and a wave of self-doubt washed over me. Was I really qualified to do this? Will I able to fully learn to use this CMS since it's a different one from what I'm used to? Will there be some front-end coding involved? Will I even learn to love this job even if there wasn't any writing or creating involved?

I was panicking. Before I got this job, I was freelance writing for an agency, which was fun. Still, I was not too fond of billing by the hour, being timed for my work, not getting enough pay, and not having the creative energy left after the day was done. I knew I couldn't keep up with freelance writing and expect to work on my projects in the long term. I needed a better day job.

When I went on to interview for the second time and then the final time with them, with the last one being interviewed by the CEO, I knew I had the job bagged. Even after I got the job offer, I still couldn't shake off the feeling of being unqualified for this position, even if I checked all their boxes on paper. I also felt traumatized from my previous layoff. I knew I was doing an excellent job for that place, but that still didn't prevent me from getting the boot. What will prevent me from getting fired from this one?

I couldn't let myself get caught up in negative feelings.

A week before starting the position, I decided to take an HTML and CSS crash course because the engineering manager who oversaw the development of the CMS asked me if I knew how to code. Sure, I knew some HTML during my Myspace days, but who didn't? Either way, I had to brush up.

If I went through teaching myself how to use Adobe Creative Cloud, I should be able to learn any other program, right?

My willingness to learn was my saving grace, and not to mention, I am a very fast learner. The latter part I will brag about.

Three days into my job, I told my boss I was ready to work within the CMS. The crash course helped me understand how it worked and some of the backend issues. My boss and the engineering manager are also patient teachers and open to new ideas. I'm about to reach my third month on this job, and I am already building pages within the CMS.

My creative skills have also been put to good use. I've helped with some copywriting and copyediting for the content. I've planned, designed, and wireframed some pages and future versions of the site. And because I worked in publishing, I am included in conversations on how to improve the e-library and soon I will be connecting with some publishers. My boss also told me that the organization had some funding for any training I wanted, so I'm considering getting my UX/UI certification for now and some front-end development later.

I went from working in a creative department to tech! And now that my day job is a world away from writing, I have enough creative energy to work on my personal projects and start new creative pursuits in my spare time.

I am enjoying my new job. So far, I feel appreciated for the work I do, I’m learning tons of new skills, plus I am very grateful to finally be out of the job hunt. Having a day job, I can finally work on my novel.

There's still a lot more writing involved with that project, plus editing, overcoming more imposter syndrome, believing in oneself, championing your work in front of agents, or deciding whether to pursue self-publishing once more. But once I overcome that, I know all my roads will continue leading to writing.

Now, it's just a matter of doing it.