When writing becomes more than a private love affair

"The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps."- Robert Benchley

There's an old adage that goes, "Get a job doing something you love, and you'll never work a day in your life." For the longest time I agreed with this. As a software developer by trade, my love of computers knew no bounds. I'd been programming since the tender age of twelve, when I would turn on my Commodore VIC-20 and spend hours writing programs (usually games of some sort), only to have all my work destroyed when I turned the computer off. I didn't have any means of storing data, you see, and no way of keeping the computer on since I also used the family TV as my monitor. As I grew older, so did my love coding. It seemed only natural to make this my chosen profession. That was a long, long time ago, and I never regretted my decision... or so I told myself.

There was another child inside of me who longed for a different path. That child enjoyed the written word. From my first story in fourth grade, about a giant heart that ate New York City, to my last short story in college about the joys of owning a pet turtle, I constantly wrote about anything and everything. It was a talent I had and enjoyed sharing immensely, but never took seriously because I didn't think I could get a job writing, and computers were, and still are, the hottest thing one could do.

The child remained hidden throughout early adulthood, until finally he decided he'd had enough. I started writing again. The more I wrote, the more I began to realize that, perhaps, I wasn't as in love with computers as I once thought. Like someone who finds themselves no longer enamored with a lover of many years, I found myself wondering if perhaps I hadn't made a mistake in choosing my professional wife. Call it mid-life crisis. Call it irrational behavior pushed along by the allure of something new. Call it what you will, I couldn't deny that my heart was forever changed. My new mistress had a siren song I couldn't resist and I found myself spending my days with my computer wife, and my passionate nights naked with my thoughts and my text editor.

And now, it seems, perhaps the mistress will be demanding more of my time. I've recently started writing professionally for a podcasting company, Blazing Caribou Studios. It's not a paying gig so I guess it's not a 'professional' gig in that sense, but I'm writing for something that matters, and most importantly it's something that people will be reading and listening to voluntarily. The thrill of this is indescribable, except to say it compares to the first time I wrote a computer program that someone else liked and used. In other words, my writing work has become validated.

Granted, it's not much, but it's a start. A good start. I'm still sticking with my computer wife, but the mistress has become less of a passing interest, and more something that may convince me that perhaps I could divorce my wife after all.

It's an idea at least worth persuing!