Day Job

Over at the Inkpunks, Wendy has distilled almost two weeks worth of us talking back and forth about day jobs and creative life into an excellent post, The Job Continuum:

"One of the most difficult aspects of working in writing and the visual arts (all of the Inkpunks are involved in one, the other, or both), is that they are arts people seem to only value when they are earning money. No one asks a knitter if they’ve ever sold a sweater, but people tend to smirk at authors who haven’t sold any books. There’s a lot of pressure to measure your success as a writer by the amount of money you’ve made." ~read more

There you will get a glimpse into our various paths and life situations as we try to balance family, money, and creative life.

Me, I just turned in notice at my day job. Not something I did lightly:

"It has just become time for something to give.
I was struggling to keep up with illustration deadlines, spending a good amount of time at my day job doing freelance work (it’s a slow job, I am usually able to get away with that), and constantly worried about how I was neglecting my partner and son to keep on top of it all. I’d hoped to wait till my freelance income matched my day job income. I’m not quite there yet. But still, it is time."

All of us, Sandra, Erika, Wendy, Christie, John, (and tho they didn't have direct quotes in the post, Andy and Adam) all have different life situations and different ways of negotiating this topic.

Incidentally, Kat Howard also blogged along a similar thread, Stealing Sands from the Hourglass:

"Here is the thing about writing: if you wait until you have free time to do it, you will write very few words. If you want to write, you must steal time from other places of your life, and protect those stolen moments vigorously, because otherwise, things will encroach on them, the time will disappear, and you will still never have written.

How do you steal time? You make sacrifices, you give things up. You get up an hour before the rest of the house, or go to bed after everyone else is asleep. You write on your lunch hour. You don't watch television. You lock yourself out of the internet...

Sometimes, though, stealing time isn't enough. Sometimes, it's finding the energy...."
~read more

It's a different answer for everyone. How do you do it?