Novel Challenge Update: Holy Sh!t, I did it!

OhmygodIdidit. I wrote a novel in one month. I haven’t written fiction since I was at school (not counting some of those legal memos…) and somehow I wrote a whole novel in 31 days, less actually. This must be what it feels like to have a superpower.

It’s not that I didn’t think I could do it. It’s that I didn’t think I would do it. It’s a weird forward-looking / backward-looking thing: I didn’t see myself as an old lady looking back on a life that included having written a novel at 30.

It has opened up a whole new world for me — one in which I really can do anything I set my mind to. Truth is, this world exists for all of us, it’s just that some people are out there doing stuff and the rest of us are too busy to join them.

Blue Tuesday

This week I discovered the hard way that happiness and frivolity does not automatically fill the vacuum left by quitting your job. I thought about whether I should write this post but then I remembered my promise of being honest and giving a real picture of what it’s like to leave the working world. It’s not all skipping across Hampstead Heath with the wind in your hair (although I have done that too), and I feel a duty to give it to you straight, so here it goes…

All About the Word Count

When I started the project, it was fully my intention to give periodic updates during my January novel-writing challenge. I envisioned posts on plot development, canvassing for ideas, crowdsourcing character names. But it turns out that just writing the novel itself is pretty all-consuming. If I’m honest, I just didn’t have the energy to blog about it as well. Only now, when I feel I’ve gotten far enough up the hill so there is actually something to see when I look behind me, do I feel like I can pause for breath and talk about how it’s going.

Resolving to be Carefree and Other Oxymorons

For me, January 2014 is all about building habits and integrating them into my life before I become consumed by my next project. I want to be on my way to having good, helpful, healthful framework in place so that when the craziness comes again I’ll be ready for it. The mental image I have is of a lattice of steel girders (the framework) being engulfed by a stream of liquid concrete (the project), which is being pumped in at a continuous and unrelenting rate (no doubt I owe this imagery to residual trauma from having advised clients in the construction industry for most of 2013 — or maybe I’ve just watched too many episodes of Grand Designs).

To build the framework I came up with a list of 54 resolutions for the New Year.

A Novel Approach

It’s Day 7 of my January challenge to write a novel in a month and it has become painfully obvious that I have bitten off way more than I can chew. This is hands down the hardest thing I have ever done.

I never understood before what people meant when they said that they didn’t enjoy the “writing process”. I love writing! (I thought) Why are they trying to be writers if they don’t like writing? (I scoffed) More fool me.

Writer Be Free

2014 is here! Time to make good on the promises I’ve been making myself and follow-through on my grand exit from my job in November. If I’m not going to be a lawyer, what am I going to be? That’s a difficult question which I’m content to leave unresolved for now. In the meantime, if I can’t figure out what I’m going to be, I can at least focus on the marginally less daunting question of what I am going to do this month. This will be my first project as an un/self-employed, newly freed workerbee, so I want to make it a good one.

My Few Years’ Resolutions

It’s so cold outside the tips of my ears are actually hurting. In the pitch dark, I can see the retreating reds of my in-law’s rear lights as their well-worn Volvo trundles down the rocky and uneven lane towards their house. The Volvo has many things — character, a treasure trove of found objects, a way-way-back — but good suspension is not one of them. Dan and I have decided to walk the rest of the way.

While Dan furiously taps away on his Blackberry, taking advantage of a rare moment of peace — and good phone signal — I take the opportunity to consider the upcoming New Year (while jogging on the spot to maintain circulation). It’s a good time to reflect on new things because the cold, country air makes you feel so clean, and the wide, expansive night sky, littered with stars, allows you experience the vastness of the world and the limitlessness of the human spirit in a way that the view from my bedroom window in London just never does.

Day 2: What Next Syndrome

I haven’t actually written the About page yet, but once I do it will say something like this: the point of this blog is to describe what it is like to leave a perfectly good but ill-fitting career to pursue more meaningful work and a more fulfilling way of life. For this blog to be of any use to anyone I have faced the uncomfortable fact that I will have to be open and honest with you. I don’t mean honest in an oversharing, gossipy, updates on my sex life way. I mean honest as in giving you the whole truth, not just the glamorous parts.

You may have noticed that the first couple of posts weren’t overflowing with excitement and effervescence. That’s because that’s not how it was during my last days of work and it would be misleading for me to have painted the picture any other way. I am as convinced as ever that this was the right move for me, and that it would also be the right move for many of those of you reading this post. But that don’t make it easy.

A bit more truth: Day 1 was awesome.

This blog isn’t meant to be a diary but people have expressed an interest in what I am actually doing with my free time now, that I actually have some. I think people want to daydream about what they could be doing if they didn’t have to go to work. So what did I do with that first precious day? I read the paper, slowly and with pleasure; I sold some stuff on eBay; I went shopping on Carnaby Street and saw all the Christmas lights along Oxford Street; I walked through central London and over the river; I checked out the amazing World Press Photo 2013 exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall; I treated myself to a crêpe from one of the pop-up Christmas vendors that have taken up residence on the South Bank; and I had dinner with friends in East London. And I loved every minute of it.

The best thing about having time is that you can live in the slow lane. I walked because I wasn’t in a hurry. I got the bus instead of the tube. Herds of commuters surged around me at Waterloo station with their eyes trained straight ahead or on the ground, and I was able to drift through the crowd at a relaxed pace, looking up at the lights and taking in the skyline.

All this slowness gave me time to think, which, it turns out, is a dangerous thing. You see one of the side-effects of being stuck in Professional Purgatory is that two casual, insidious and sneaky little words are never far from your mind: what next?

They can be so innocent-seeming, so optimistic. But they can also be sinister and panicky.

Of course, I’m an organised person — a planner at heart — so it’s not as if those words waited until my first days of freedom to rear their mischievous heads. Naturally, those words occupied my thoughts even before I handed in my notice, and my former colleagues, in their incredibly supportive way, hardly let me forget them. Once I posted the news of my exit from the legal world on Facebook – “8 years, 3 degrees, 6 jobs. Done with law” – those two words featured most prominently amongst the ensuing stream of comments.

It is asked with no malice, no pre-judgment, and no expectations, but it is asked nonetheless. What are you doing next?

I want to start a business. Oh? What kind? I’m trying to figure that out…

My answers seem evasive and secretive, but that’s because people can’t conceive that I would leave such a stable and prestigious career with nothing in the pipeline. Amusingly some of my colleagues appeared to be under the impression that I was unwilling to disclose my plans for fear of theft of my million-dollar idea. Yeah, that’s what it is.

I do have thoughts, ideas, dreams. But they’re fuzzy and out of focus. I can’t look right at them now, they are too bright and indistinct. More than a specific idea, I left because I had a feeling – a desire, a drive, a need to search for something else, something more. But that doesn’t make for a very satisfactory answer to polite inquiries during small talk.

I should have done what a lawyer friend reported his colleague as saying. When the colleague was leaving and people asked what he was doing next he said we was going to drum school. As my friend remarked, the questioners could hardly have said “I don’t think you’ll make a very good drummer”, so that was usually the end of the conversation.

Clearly it’s not just other people – I am also asking myself as well. But I am trying hard to resist the urge to tackle that question head on. Why? Because that was the whole point of the escape. To build a life without the rules and constraints. To take the time to think objectively about how to achieve a happy existence. To hit the eject button and float down on the parachute without trying to aim for one haystack or another.

That’s when I realised that “what next” is symptomatic of life on the conveyor belt. If you think of your life as a series of milestones and achievements you will always be thinking about the next thing. For some people it is school, marriage, babies. For me it was good grades, right university, good job. Study law, train to be a lawyer, become a lawyer. Junior lawyer, mid-level, counsel, then partner. One thing follows the other.

By leaving my job I have short-circuited this cycle. There is no obvious “next thing”. Anything could be next. The enormity of that prospect is only just hitting me.

So I am going to give myself until the New Year to clear my head and try to re-wire my thinking about jobs and careers. It will take more than a few weeks to shake off 30 years of “harmless good advice” (cough, brainwashing) but I hope it will serve as a recuperative pause before I hit the ground running in January.

In the meantime I will be doing some serious thinking about topics that are so important that I put off thinking about them until now. You see I was waiting for the moment when I would have sufficient time to give them the serious consideration they deserve. Like when I retired maybe? Might be a little late then. Better perhaps to think about family and happiness and health and well-being and success and fulfillment now; instead of waiting until I’m 60.

And next time someone asks me “what are you doing next?”, I am going to say “I honestly don’t know, and you shouldn’t either”.

Day 1: Workerbee. Free.

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!!

Freedom to think, the sleep, to giggle, to stare out the window, to lie down, to go for a walk, to read, to shout, to sing, to tap, to roll around, to hum, to whistle, to skip, to write, to meditate and to just be, uninterrupted.

No minimizing my screen when I see someone coming. No pretending I’m reading when I’m really daydreaming. No suppressing a yawn when I’m meant to be concentrating. (I can’t help it! It’s physiological, or something.)

No taking minutes on conference calls. No conference calls at all! (Hurrah!)

No commute! No positioning myself by the doors of the incoming train to maximise the chances of getting a seat. No pushing and shoving. No face in sweaty armpit or leaning on sweaty back.

No blackberry. No red flashing light of doom.

No Kind Regards.

No trying to read my bosses’ minds. No bosses of any kind!

Just me, waking up and doing what I want, when I want.

So what shall I do today?

T-1: Welcome to Professional Purgatory

How does it feel? Exciting? Scary? You must be excited, right? How do you feel?

Since I quit my high-flying law job 8 weeks ago my colleagues have been very interested in how it feels to have handed in my notice. I’ve had several jobs in my short-but-varied legal career so this isn’t a completely new experience for me, but I can understand their inquisitiveness. Everyone appreciates that the “job for life” is dead but they don’t fully realise that this applies to them — until it does. As a result many of my colleagues were born and bred in the same firm and haven’t interviewed for a job since they were 20 years old. They have never said “no” to their bosses, never mind “screw you, I’m done”. The world outside seems to be a scary place, full of uncertainty, so they are curious about my journey to the “other side”.

In my experience there are several stages to the leaving process. The nervousness and prevarication as you pace around your office, psyching yourself up to hand in your resignation. The blur of emotions as its actually happening, the elation that you’ve actually done it. The relief that months and weeks of agonising are over, swiftly followed by a vague sense of hurt that your bosses didn’t try to talk you out of it and didn’t seem that sad to see you go. The smugness as you tell your colleagues that you will be escaping.

You go home that day emotionally drained and at peace. You have the best night’s sleep ever.

And the next day, you go into work and — anti-climax — everything is the same. You still have to meet deadlines, you still have to talk to clients, you still have to be a good worker. This part is the worst. When the phone rings it causes you physical pain. When you have to stay late you have never felt more resentlful. When you get given new work, you are incredulous, you can’t believe this is happening. You are in Professional Purgatory. And you can’t wait to get out.

The weeks pass and your notice period ticks away. As your leave date hurtles towards you, the feelings change. You start to see the good things about working for your employer. You’ll miss the people, the atmosphere, the local lunch spots. You feel a warm fondness, edged with a vague sense of remorse. Perhaps you rushed into things? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to stay? But then you think of your new shiny job and the cool and lovely people you’ll be working with. I bet they don’t have to put up with x, y and z. I bet they are well managed and appreciated. I bet they are really, really happy. Yes, it was the right decision. Purgatory passes and you are delivered to your new life with a calm sense of belonging.

But this is where my current story differs from its previous incarnations. You see I’ve gone and done the unthinkable. I have left my job with nothing to go to.

One of the downsides of this, apart from the delicate dance I’m doing with my overdraft, is that, as my last day drew inexorably closer, I had no protective foil against my doubts and second-thoughts. On the day itself I felt a rising sense of panic. That jolt when you miss the last step on the stairs. That feeling of weightlessness when your plane is gaining altitude and it seems like the engines won’t have enough thrust to bring the aircraft level. I was floating in limbo.

What have I done? For all the perfectly rational reasons I have been articulating to myself in the last few months I knew it was absolutely the right decision to leave. But I still didn’t want to actually go through with it. Maybe I could call it off? I’m sure they’d let me stay, wouldn’t they? We’ll cancel the leaving party. We’ll sort something out. Or I could leave next week maybe, just push it back a little.

I suddenly understood why people find it so hard to leave their jobs, to even consider dusting off their CV and talking to recruiters. It is so much easier to do nothing. Inertia is a powerful force. You can sit back and let the current take you wherever it wants you to go, and you are not responsible for the choice of destination. So much more uncomfortable to take hold of the controls.

How did I overcome this paralysis? I had to remind myself why I was leaving and what I’m hoping to achieve: freedom, happiness and a more fulfilling life. A fragment of Coldplay’s The Scientist, which always reminds me of uni, came to mind: nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be so hard. Well I can tell you it is hard, or it was for me at least. But, I am proud to report, certainly not impossible.

So I did it, I left. I packed up my stuff, I gave my leaving speech, I partied with my friends and colleagues.

And Monday, 18th November 2013, is Day 1. The first day of the rest of my life.