Let me tell you about some things that I have done, and about some other things that I am going to do.
Effective 5/28/2010, I will be leaving my current job. There are a lot of reasons behind this, and I've had a hard time explaining myself to people that ask me why I am doing it. I agree with them: it's a little short-sighted, perhaps even rash. The money is good, it plays to my skills, it's a not unpleasant commute, etc., etc..
For my part, it's been more profitable to not think about the ways my current employment has been deficient. It has given me a lot, and I'd like to think I have worked hard enough to deserve what I have received. But now that I have proven to myself and to my resume` that I can do work like this, I feel that it's time to turn my attention toward other goals.
I've always wanted to write more. Ideas buzz through my head with alarming frequency, and I barely have the time to jot them down on a notepad. Also, during my last job search I was greatly limited in the positions I could expect to be considered for, but now my resume is substantially stronger and I am far more confident than I was then. Many of those jobs I passed over seem less like long shots now.
Leaving also gives me the chance to do unpaid or low-paid work, like internships. Though I am more confident, I will not claim to be the best, most qualified candidate in the world. Internships are a good way to change that. Also, internships present an opportunity to simply work at a place that I really respect -- like McSweeny's, the New Yorker, or the Atlantic.
Now, of course, I could have started actively searching for jobs months ago and maintained my current position throughout my search. That has certainly, and rightly, been suggested to me over the past few weeks. Part of my reason for not choosing that route was just a desire to leave on my own terms. Part of it was wanting to get the clarification about how to talk about the work I had done -- ghost writing, writing for multiple clients, and so on.
But I also wanted to be daring, and to do something completely new. This is a unique time for me: I'm young, I've got no obligations, I'm in a good financial situation (relatively speaking). Though I loathe rhetorical questions, it's hard to ask: why not do something adventurous? And so we arrive to the things that I am going to do:
I am going to take a month-long bus trip through America.
Some more painful, but effective rhetorical questions: Am I ripping of Red Eye Black Eye? Absolutely. Am I going all Kerouac on you? Probably. Do I think I'll get a book deal out of this? Probably not, but you never know. The point is that it's something I never could have done before, and would have been sorely tempted to sacrifice otherwise.
I'm being pig-headed, I know. I am insisting on doing things my own way, when there are innumerable other options open to me. But right now I feel like this is the right thing to do. Something I have to do. Something I'll surely regret if I don't. I'm a dithering fence-sitter by nature, but somethings -- like now -- I just know what to do.
Oh, and I am calling this trip "The Assault on America's Senses."
So, rationalizing and explaining aside, here's the very, very rough outline of the bus trip:
