Opportunities Outside of the Day Job
I've had some interesting offers show up in my inbox in the past couple of years, but lately the trend is accelerating rapidly. I've spoken at the last two Lotuspheres and also the last two ILUGs, and I'm co-writing the LotusUserGroup.org developer newsletter with Duffbert The Wise and Powerful (an official Oblivion Prize to the first one to correctly name the reference). And recently I've been invited to write more articles and I've also been asked to speak at additional conferences. It's reached the point that I had to turn some down, which boggles my mind. That's not necessarily terribly interesting to anybody else, though. And I'm not blogging it for the self-inflicted ego stroking (trust me, being recruited to write and speak is enough of an ego boost for anyone).
So what's the big deal? Well, I just think it's a bit odd. I work for a customer (Acme, Inc, remember?), not a business partner or consulting firm. And Acme doesn't even like it when I do this sort of thing. I have to leave their name off of everything I do outside of work. We're officially in "don't ask, don't tell" mode about it; my immediate manager and I considered arguing the policy about leaving Acme's name out of things, but we decided not to raise the question because we don't expect to like the answer. So, not only am I not advancing either my career at Acme OR the business prospects of my company, I may actually be harming myself.
So why do it? Because I enjoy it. Oh, don't get me wrong, I still get very nervous about speaking. But I treat it like stage fright, and now that I've done it a few times I don't have to worry about whether or not I can handle it. I like the work of speaking, though, and I like to succeed at something that's difficult for me. I also really enjoy spending time with the other speakers in our community, and being part of that crowd counts as a very significant benefit to me.
As far as writing? That's easy. I like to write, I've always been able to write, and it doesn't take much effort on my part. In fact, when my wife (aka The Doctor, though she doesn't have a sonic screwdriver...) heard about the new articles and conferences, she said I should quit my day job and just write for a living. She wasn't entirely kidding, either, though I didn't take the suggestion very seriously. Part of me would really love to do exactly that. When people play the game where they ask what you would do with your life if you won one of the huge lotteries and didn't need to work, my answer is that I'd write articles, go to conferences, review products, and speak. In other words, Volker: I think I'm jealous. *grin*
Then I found out today that I won't get a promotion I wanted at Acme. It seems like my two careers are heading in opposite directions. And I admit that I'm becoming curious about what it would take to write for a living. I certainly wouldn't make as much money as I do now, and there would be a fair amount of uncertainty about my income at any given time, but as my wife pointed out, I *am* married to a doctor. I'm not sure it's possible, though, because there just aren't enough technical articles that I could write - I'd have to expand my scope quite a bit. And I don't think I'd be comfortable unless I had a steady, regular writing job. John Scalzi blogs about his career as a writer sometimes (he's astonishingly honest about how much AND how little money he has made), and he always points out that he succeeded as a fiction writer because he got lots of jobs writing anything people would pay him to write, definitely including nonfiction. I'd be perfectly happy writing all sorts of things, but I have no idea how one gets started down that path. The writing jobs I've had so far have been literally handed to me, so I have no experience looking for writing gigs and I suspect I'd be really bad at it. So I very much doubt that I will ever "give up the day job" and become a fulltime writer (and speaker). It's becoming a very tempting thought lately, though (I'm aware that this would be a lousy time to switch careers, from an economic point of view)...
So tell me, what would you think if this was happening to you? Or if it already HAS happened to you, what did you do about it and what does 20/20 hindsight tell you?
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