Today I celebrate four years here in the Czech Republic. So I thought it was a time to look to the past and see how it all began so to speak. How had I ended up where I am right now?
Somewhere back in the mists of history, about 4 years and 10 months ago (give or take a couple weeks) I decided that I needed a change. I knew it had to be a major change because I was just burnt out. I hatedmy job, life wasn’t all that exciting. In general, I was completely dissatisfied with most things in my life.
What some people might find strange was that at the time I had ‘the American Dream.’ I had the shiny sports car, 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse, I had the flat in downtown Milwaukee that was $1000 a month. I worked at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee as Senior Network and Systems Administrator. It was an easy job where there was more time than work many days and I was left pretty much on my own to do the work I needed to do.
I had union representation which translated into extremely good benefits and since it was a state institution I worked for the government basically.
And I hated every last second of it by then. It was about my 10th year in IT and I was done. I couldn’t answer the same questions anymore. I was tired of dealing with people who weren’t interested in learning how to avoid the problem or fix it themselves. I was rapidly turning into the guy who says things like ‘did you try turning it off and on again’
I had been thinking about my situation for some time by then. Spring was coming and of course some people get restless. Considering I have a total attention span of about 2 years and I had been there a year and a half almost, the wanderlust was sneaking up on me again.
So everyday at work I would wonder why I was doing it. Every night I would go home and think about what I wanted to do with my life. What I wanted to be remembered as….as I wrote my first book.
Yeah, sometimes I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. Because it took me a month or three to realize the answer to that question…I wanted to write for a living. So the gears started turning in earnest while I churned out page after page of my first book.
The gears pointed to me escaping from America and living somewhere that I could make time to write. Research showed me that teaching English could be accomplished in 20 hours a week, providing enough to survive, and give me an extra 20 hours a week to write. So I continued research, where to teach, how to get into it etc… (much of that research turned into a series of articles I wrote called How to become an English Teacher Living Abroad which is still fairly useful and from time-to-time has people contacting me about it.
So then I did it. I left America, I did some travelling, I got a B in my TEFL course and I started teaching English. I continued to travel around Europe but the Czech Republic had become home. It had become the place that I 100% wanted to be and was 100% comfortable. But the teaching, bills, expenses and life were taking their toll and the writing was falling to the wayside until June 2006 when I started writing for Generation: Gamerz. It was an outlet that broke open the cap on the geyser of words within and it along with the Neural Masses experiment I was doing started the honing my craft.
The first book completed, I began a second. I did more short stories. I accepted challenges from friends, I wrote small one page stories for people I had just met or for some people’s birthdays. But none of it paid, even though it was all extremely fulfilling.
No, the final step came in January 2008 when I was in America. I had done a bit of freelancing before then but not consistently. Suddenly I was stranded in America without income, purpose and direction. I knew I had to do something to start making money…and so I did. I started working as a pen-for-hire, full-time. I think I got lucky because I can’t believe how easy it was. I bid on some projects, got them, completed them, got more. I couldn’t believe that it was so simple. Every piece of client feedback was perfection. Every client was 100% satisfied (except for one who didn’t know exactly what they had wanted to begin with). 2008 I didn’t do anything but write. No teaching (except for a few emergency requests). No IT work, no nothing. I wrote and wrote and wrote some more. In August I left Generation: Gamerz and took the Editor-in-Chief (and part owner) role at Gamers Daily News. My writing has grown and I have monthly clients, regular writing gigs and it is ever expanding. I have organized the GDN writing staff and schedule to some 300% traffic improvement in 7 months.
Things are indeed looking up. Sure, I haven’t sold a book…yet. But I’m writing. I’m living the dream as numerous people have told me. Every day I wake up knowing that I’m one of the luckiest people on the planet.
If I never sell a book I don’t care. I write to understand life, to entertain friends and strangers. I’m a storyteller, it’s my job to pass the stories on to others… and so that’s what I do. If you’ve ever seen me in an inebriated state…you know I can tell whoppers, like my microscopic examination of ‘Why it’s the 10 Second Rule.”
People have told me that my writing makes them laugh, cry, long for love (those exact words were said by Miranda herself once, the real one, not the one with the Y). That means to me that no matter what scale you use to judge my success, I am successful at what I do.
Thank you for reading, for feeling, for appreciating… know that you the readers are appreciated in return.
Čau…