Well, here I go! This is my first post on my first day of being a professional writer. A month ago I told my boss that I wasn’t cut out for the job anymore, and that my last day would be in early March. It was my first job out of college and I had only been there for a year. Yes, just one year of the 9-5 office life and I was already sick of it! Maybe you know the feeling already, and if you don’t, then count yourself lucky. Dreading the next days’ tasks before you’re even on the clock, worrying about deadlines and computer problems, solving old issues for clients while developing the next new thing at the same time, tickets and emails and messages constantly buzzing at you, meeting after meeting, wondering how long you’ll put off what you want for the security of a steady income, and all the while fantasizing about what it would be like to walk into your manager’s office and just say “I quit.” That’s exactly how I felt, and exactly what I did.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is Ben and I have this crazy, stupid dream of writing stuff and selling it. I want so badly to publish my work and make a living off of it like so many of the authors that have sucked me into their stories and helped make me who I am. I’ve always been an avid reader, from sci-fi to lit fic, magazines and blogs, even a bit of romance here and there, my love of the written word has gotten me through thick and thin. It also planted in me an obsession with dreaming up new worlds and characters and stories, ideas that flourish whether I want them to or not. Putting pen to paper is a different thing entirely though. It took a rather forceful college professor making me share my stories to earn a grade to show me that it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be to turn those ideas into reality and let people see them. I’m 24 years old at the time of this post, and I’ve been writing stories and articles as a hobby writer for the past three years. Even though that elective writing course fostered my dream and I couldn’t stamp it out, by the time I graduated I still wasn’t ready to go full time. I was afraid to take the risky option. In fact I still am. Typing this through all the shaking is really rather difficult. It took a year and some change of a ‘real job’ for me to work up the courage to give this a go, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing all this time! I can proudly say that in the past three years of hobby writing I have published, *wait for it* *drum roll* *dramatic pause* absolutely nothing! Well ok, maybe I’m not so proud of that actually. I’ve been intimidated by the whole process. Work held me back. Nobody wanted to publish what I sent out. And a million other excuses I could tell myself. That being said, the opportunity to start from as close to ground zero as possible and blog the entire experience isn’t something I would get to do otherwise, so I’m happy, in a way, that I have yet to publish something for real.

I’m hoping that by blogging my journey from start to finish, strategy to tactics, and everything in between, I’ll be able to see where I’ve come from, chart where I’m going, and (most importantly) learn from my inevitable mistakes. Maybe, just maybe, if I make it big enough and someone is curious, they can find this blog and learn from my mistakes instead of their own, and get a little inspired along the way. Maybe it will turn out that the biggest mistake is one I’ve already made and that I should’ve stuck with my boring day job until I retire. To be honest with you though, I really don’t give a shit. There is nothing in the world I would trade for this feeling that I have right now while writing this, telling you, dear reader, that I quit my job and when my boss asked what I’m going to do instead I told her “I’m going to be a writer!”

That got me the most awkward pause of my life. You’d think I just said I was going to become a meth dealer. It didn’t happen just once either, but every single time I told a coworker what I was quitting to do I got some variant of awkward pause. After those pauses though, I got a big surprise from everyone: nothing but support. Most of my coworkers were much older than I am, with families to provide for, debts to pay, a lifestyle to maintain. Every one of them told me that they themselves wished they’d had the chance to do what I’m doing right now when they were young. I think everybody wants to do this, not to write specifically, but to follow their dreams. They felt the chance had already passed them by. I wanted to tell them they were wrong. That they can always try, that the only thing standing in the way is their own fear, but I’m wasn’t in their shoes. All I have to lose right now is career potential, my income, and the sunken cost of the work I put in to acquire those things. I suppose it would be more accurate to say I’ve already sacrificed them. Compared to a child or a loved one though, they’re meaningless. Who would I be to tell my coworkers they should put their livelihood in jeopardy to follow their dreams? I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to do this, and to trade it for a career I can pick back up or an income I can replace would be just plain stupid. A few weeks ago I thought it took guts to quit my job. Now I realize I’m probably the least courageous person to have tried this because I have the least to lose. To say that the point of this blog is to get you to follow your dreams at any cost like I did would be arrogant, ignorant, and downright insulting to anyone that has someone who needs them. I’m not going to tell you that this is a good idea. I can’t say in good conscience that its definitely worth it because I don’t know what you stand to lose. What I can say definitively is this: Starting on a journey you’ve always wanted to take feels amazing, and just because its too risky now doesn’t mean you won’t have more security later. I didn’t start on this today, or yesterday, or when I was ready to quit my job. I started years ago, in the elective course where someone made me share what’s inside my head with a classroom full of people. Don’t let your dreams wait. When the opportunity finally comes around the last thing you want holding you back is a lack of confidence. I have a head start because I’ve been working at this skill for years already, and even though I’m unpublished and probably under-skilled and ignorant of the market and a million other things I still have the confidence that I can make it work. Like a wound watch, a dream only starts ticking after you’ve taken the time and effort to give it potential.

If the cost of your dreams is already too great, or if you’re one of the many billions who can’t just drop everything to do what you want deep down, then you can follow my dream, right here, until you’re ready to follow your own. So here I go, the very first day of my new, and Dangerous Day Job.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley