5 Reasons I Quit My Job to Become a Writer

My path to writer runs coast to coast and includes every time zone in the continental United States

This isn’t another “Quit your job and be a writer” article, despite the title. This is a piece about a personal choice of mine, and the reasons I made it.

In August 2018, I moved cross country to support my girlfriend so she could pursue a grad school degree in public health. At the time, I was teaching English at a community college and online, the tail end of a 25-year career.

One day, drained from another day teaching and grading, I parked myself in a local tavern and started writing a memoir.

During our move, I cobbled together more crappy teaching jobs to take me through May 2019 to make ends meet — more grading, more dull students, more unimaginative and ineffective administrators.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love teaching, or at least used to. I’m an inspiring teacher. But the lifeblood of my desire to teach was drained by the system that wanted me to be just another cog in the machine. There has to be more out there.

Teaching was getting in the way of my writing time.

With only one teaching assignment in spring 2019, I went on partial unemployment. Then with the help of a job placement service, I found a full-time temporary position working with a team reorganizing the stacks in the Yale University Library, 15 floors and millions of books.

It was the first time in 25 years that I had a job that didn’t require me to bring work home. I loved it.

I worked in Yale University’s legendary Sterling library, surrounded by books, especially those in the literature section, many of which I had studied during grad school. After work, I had no grading and no teaching prep. I could spend time with my girlfriend and our new puppy, a Dachshund named Herman, and write.

Now, in the middle of a pandemic, my girlfriend has completed her degree and is searching for that first golden job in public health.

I continue to write every chance I get.

In any case, you’re starting to see the reasons I chose this lifestyle. I don’t make a lot of money. In fact, I made $15,000 dollars less this past year than when I was teaching, but I am infinitely happier. When you don’t have to bring work home after your day job, it opens up your world to a ton of other possibilities.

Here are the reasons I chose to become a writer now, knowing it would take me years to make a lot of money, if ever.

1. I Can Write From Anywhere, and I Have Plenty to Write.

“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”

— Flannery O’Connor

I graduated with a degree in creative writing, planning to be a writer. To support myself in graduate school, I taught and fell in love with teaching.

Between teaching and a personal life filled with caring for a family suffering from mental illness, I was pulled away from my original writing plans. But I never lost sight of that goal. I jotted down notes, story ideas, phrases, whole sentences, and stuffed them into a box for years.

Now more than 30 years later, I have more to write about than I have time. And now it’s time to write.

2. I’m My Own Boss

“Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of your life.”

— Michael LeBoeuf

As a writer, I set my own hours and my own daily goals. Depending on my current projects, upon waking early, I can get absorbed in writing for 6 or 7 hours, a good long workday for most people.

Sometimes, I need to let the ideas percolate a little bit and will take notes and read, or watch an inspiring show or movie.

Sometimes I need a little extra sleep, or there are far too many errands that need attention — piles of laundry, a sink full of dishes, a hungry attention-seeking Dachshund.

Sometimes, it’s fresh air and new scenery that my blood calls for. I’m particularly drawn to the water and can stare into the sea for hours, which inevitably opens the floodgates of writing ideas.

I know myself better than anyone knows me. Lashing myself to a chair to follow some archaic, uninspired, artificial 8–5 workday isn’t going to get the work out of me.

I’ve had many bosses in my life, some good, some bad. Some were micromanagers, and some didn’t even know my name. By far the most troublesome ones were the clock watchers. I remember two in particular who scolded me, a grown man in my 30s and 40s, for being 3 minutes late to work at 8:00 in the morning when no one else was in the building. Absurd.

I don’t like wasting anyone else’s time, and I certainly don’t like to waste my own, unless that’s my choice.

I’m the hardest boss I’ll ever have, but I’m also the one who can get the most work out of me. I’d rather work for myself than follow someone else’s agenda for what I should be doing.

3. I’m in Charge of What Supplemental Work I Take

“The dream is free. The hustle is sold separately.”

— Unknown

A lot of people think of teaching as a noble profession. Summers off. Shaping young hearts and minds. Teaching for the love of it.

Except, there’s not much money in teaching.

English teachers have it the worst — the grading never stops. Because I didn’t get paid much, I had to work summers, every summer. And I always had work to do — every holiday, every weekend, every evening of the week. There was no letting up. It was a relentless flood of grading, an avalanche of sleepless nights and bad writing, and the idea that nothing I could do would make much difference.

Of course, my students learned and most passed. But I was always tired and worn down, and often sick.

Now I work more than ever. But I’m energized because it’s my work, my writing. I set the pace, the tone, the when the where and the how. If I need a day off, I take it. If the work is going well and I want to keep going, I do. If I need a break, I do something else and then come back to my writing refreshed.

Because of the low pay for teachers, I needed to take additional jobs to supplement my income, whether other teaching jobs, or achievement test scoring, tutoring and test prep jobs, or even non-teaching work like being a delivery driver or grocery store clerk.

But now that I’m not teaching anymore and am a writer, I’m conscious of the jobs I choose. Physical labor suits me. I can lift boxes and books all day, working my body and keeping my head in the writing game.

On breaks, I can tap out some sentences on my phone, and on days when the ideas are flooding in, I will take voice memos or bring my laptop to write during lunch.

Most important is that whatever supplemental work I choose, I don’t have to bring work home. That’s what teaching is — bringing work home.

Now, I can leave work at work, and when I go home, I can write. Writing is my real work. The other job is merely a way to make ends meet.

4. I Can Take Time for My Friends and Loved Ones

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.”

— Jane Austen

Teaching means meeting tough deadlines, endless grading, missing events, celebrations, and routine nights out.

As a writer, I have plenty of time. I’m more productive than ever, and I still have time to socialize (if only the weather and the pandemic would cooperate).

Unless there is an external publishing deadline I have to meet, I can usually pause the writing to attend social events. I’ve found that scheduled pauses are necessary.

When the work is going well, words have a tendency to rush upon me at a pace I can’t keep up with. I try to get it all down as quickly as I can. But pausing and letting the words settle down brings clarity and focus again.

The work will be there. I have plenty to write. And it gets down on the page one word, one letter at a time, no faster.

Now I get the work done and also attend a birthday party or opening night for a movie without unfinished work hanging over my head. I’m not suffocated by the thought that I need to finish this batch of grading before morning or the entire syllabus will be thrown off, yet again.

I go to the party, and I come back to my writing and say, “Now where was I? Oh, yes.”

5. Happiness is More Important Than Income

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

They say that the two happiest days of a boater’s life are when he buys a boat and when he sells a boat. As a former boat owner, that’s pretty much true. But I loved owning a boat, fixing it up, taking care of it, sailing it, cruising into the bay, raising the sails and turning that engine off so it’s just me, the boat, and the wind, and the gentle slap of water against the hull.

I made a decent amount of money teaching, though I was constantly rushing from one job to another and grading night and day. Of course, even though I didn’t make much, the taxman took a big chunk. Now I make substantially less money, and the taxman doesn’t come for me. You can’t get blood from a turnip.

If you saw my life, you couldn’t tell that my life was worth several thousands of dollars less than it was when I was teaching.

Without the constant slog of grading, and inspired by my own writing projects and goals, I’m infinitely happier, even though for now my bank account is leaner. I have enough — a place to live, food, and even a little extra to buy toys for my dog.

Without a lot of money, there are some things that are off-limits to me, luxury items, expensive trips, the various knick-knacks of life. But I have what I need, more than what I need.

The relentless pursuit for money never opened my life to more than I have now. I’m happier than I ever was.

If I ever write that best-seller (working on it), I’ll use some of that money to take a trip or two to see more of this world. The things money can buy just don’t do it for me. I’m more about the experience of life: Writing when I can, having a good meal, spending time with my friends, holding hands, watching the surf wash along the beach.

I’ll take my happiness to the grave. The taxman can come and gather the two pennies I have left when I’m gone.

Lee G. Hornbrook taught college English for 25 years in every time zone in the continental United States. He writes about sailing, movies, literature, baseball, mental health, growing up in the San Fernando Valley and is at work on a memoir. Find him on Twitter @awordpleaseblog and at his personal blog A Word, Please, or his Medium publication Valley Dude.