“You are crazy.”
“Why wouldn’t you just go to school for business, your job will pay for it?”
“You already have a career, don’t waste all the time you spent!”
These are all things I hear quite often when I tell people my story. These are also things I don’t hear, but I can see it on their face when I get the “well, you are still young” line. Here is the low down of my decision and why everyone thinks I’m crazy.
I have worked in banking, loans, and real estate since I first got my life together when I was 20. I am now on the cusp of 27. I spent five years working at the largest bank in my town. I was a teller, banker, loan document creator, loan document processor, small business loan document processor, back to a loan document creator. I know everything there is to know about that bank for the most part, for the parts I’ve seen. I’ve been promoted a few times and all, if not most, of my bosses love me. I ask for extra work, I ask to learn new things, I always work ahead until there is nothing left to do. I hate being bored. My job would have paid for my degree in full if I had gone for a business or finance degree. I said no.
I have since moved to a title company doing the other side of the loans for people to buy their homes. Once again gaining more experience in business and finance. I have seven years of experience behind me in this field. Yet alas this year, I will be making a giant leap towards the career path I want.
“You might fail! Why don’t you stay where you know you’ll have a good enough income to pay for that house you just bought.”
I didn’t exactly just buy the house, but you get the jist. What do I want to do? I want to write. I want to change the world with my words. I want to inspire. I want to empower people like you, reading this, to go for your dreams and to not be scared. This is my first writing job. Crazy, if you know that I have been writing my entire life. Yet I had no idea how to get involved in something like this until one day I got that beautiful e-mail.
“Hey we want you to join our team at Odyssey!”
What is this insanity? Someone just came out and asked me if I wanted to write for them? About whatever I want? About this, the thing I am more passionate about than anything else in the entire world? Here is a little background context for you.
I was (don’t judge me) a bottle and a half of wine into a daylong Castle binge on my day off. Back in the wonderful days of my youth; where I wish, I could go back to the worry I felt that I looked too fat before my metabolism actually dropped out from under me (thank you mother nature and father time, love ya!) I was 21 and suddenly the epiphany came. You, dumb girl, have been writing your entire life and you could write a book and make money off it! This was also the first time I realized how much I love to have epiphanies. They normally happen to me while driving aimlessly. I spent the next year not writing a single word. Weird, right? Well I decided that to make sure I had a plot I loved that wasn’t going to fall apart--I would spend a year plotting out the book. Exactly a year later, I started writing that book. Realizing I hadn’t taken an English class since high school and had no idea if I was doing any of this right, I needed to go back to school. So, at the ripe age of 23, I went back to college.
Fun note: College is so much easier when you actually know exactly what you want.
I’m now a senior. I’ve re-written that novel twice now. Once in 1st person and one in 3rd person omnipresent. I can’t decide what I like best. Yet, what I really fell in love with during school was all the smaller projects I had to do for classes. I wrote and published my first short story--It’s called Dragon Rider. The second story is being polished in yet another class right now. It will be published within the month and follows the same characters from Dragon Rider.
I met some amazing people and friends all by accident and they also got me to write more as well. Gilly Hathaway is one of those amazing people. She made me feel normal in this strange world of being a creator. She gets excited about character sketches and panel layouts like I do. She totally accepted basing the main bad guy off one of my cosplay characters. I have found a lifelong friend in her and I am so thankful for her and everyone else I’ve met on this crazy adventure. If you couldn’t tell, she is collaborating with me on a comic we both dreamed up while working a Comic-Con booth together--well, next to each other. This will be hitting random vendor booths, hopefully some comic book store shelves, and if the world agrees, your hands next year! These fantastic people helped me become a much better version of myself and I will love and cherish them and everyone I have met because of them eternally. (Be sure to check out her work, you won’t regret it.)
Fast forward a year after finding out my love for comics and getting my work out there for the world to see, when I got the e-mail. Yet another way my life is changing for the better. This right here. Odyssey is giving me the ability to write for the world to see. I also can reach out to others who might want to join us on this crazy adventure we call life, as a writer. I will eventually get some editing under my belt.
What can all of this do for me? I have the work ethic. Now I will have the proof in the pudding, some might say. I’ve spent years in the real world working my butt off. I have almost gotten my degree while working this full-time job, a small business on nights and weekends, and a puppy who loves to get all my attention whenever possible. Now, finally, I will have the experience in the profession I so desperately want to spend the rest of my life in. Jobs may not just toss my application in the trash due to no experience ever again! So, to everyone who has ever thought so... This is why I said no to the full ride college degree. This is why I stayed my course and went to school for something I loved. This is why I just smile and nod at the comments I receive.
I. Am. Not. Crazy.
I am driven, inspired, loyal, loving, and really, really weird, but I am not crazy. I want to spend my life happy doing what I enjoy, and I plan to do so. I knew with enough time, hard work, and the drive to do so I would get here. I had no doubt in my mind that if I tried hard enough, writing would become a way I could live my life. I’m still working on it. I’m still trying to get there. I still work in finance full time. Yet, someday soon, very soon I hope, writing will be my job and not just my passion. I sincerely hope my story can help you drive to do what you love no matter what that is. Love your life and every step, second, and moment in it.
