When you’re a child and someone asks you what you want to be when you grow up, very few are likely to respond, “I want to give the best years of my life to a nondescript job that requires sitting in a cubicle for eight hours.” And yet, that is what many of us — especially as writers — are destined for. It’s not that I didn’t try to avoid it through my years of higher education and ambitions; it’s that I needed money and I needed it by any means necessary (barring sex work). So now here I am, five dead-end jobs into my 20s with nothing to show for it but a scant 401(k) and the merciful avoidance of needing Obamacare.

The Backstory

I graduated from college with a degree in screenwriting. If that isn’t some incredible indication of my naïveté, I don’t know what is. While in college, I was determined to graduate as early as possible, assuming that, once I got out, money and opportunity would come a-knockin’. I was rudely awakened to find that the only things waiting were student loan payments and a job proofreading last wills and testaments. It was all very grim — and not in a semi-dignified F. Scott Fitzgerald or William Faulkner selling their scripts and souls to Hollywood sort of way. There was no nobility to my struggle in the way I had envisioned the tireless scraping-by of past writers like Margaret Atwood, who worked in a coffee shop, Haruki Murakami, who worked in a record store, or even Patti Smith, who worked at Strand. Unlike the aforementioned, my plight was oftentimes too soul-sucking to evoke inspiration of any kind.

“Menial” Jobs vs. Office Jobs

And this brings me to the fundamental difference between “menial” jobs and office jobs: The former at least has a certain romance to it that an office job never can. The wages are lower, sure, but the hunger and desire to succeed is higher. Once you’ve surrendered yourself to office life, you become a domesticated animal, too comfortable and complacent to bother with outside pursuits. Sure, you try for awhile to continue with your real passion, but, ultimately, you succumb to going home and watching movies or TV shows every night because your mind has been drained from essentially doing nothing of value all day.

As I sat in my cube at my first job, reading about the Selena memorabilia and crystal ball someone wanted to leave their granddaughter, I wondered if I shouldn’t start making out my own will as well because that’s how dangerously I was teetering on the edge. I wondered what the point was of remaining in Los Angeles if I was never even going to find the time to make the so-called connections I would need to miraculously land a film-related job. One day, I finally decided to quit without a backup plan, leaving behind my affordable one-bedroom apartment in Los Feliz, as well as the California emblems of golden sunshine and glorious Mexican food. And what does any person without a realistic plan or goal do? Move to New York.

New Yooooork, New Yooooork

Upon moving to the city of which Thomas Wolfe once said, “One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years,” I was terrified. I had never done anything so misguided, so unthought out. I did not experience this instant sense of belonging that Wolfe was referring to. All I felt was worry and the lingering belief that I would somehow fail even worse than I had in L.A.

I quickly settled into the common New York rhythm of moving around often and unexpectedly, from Williamsburg to Harlem to Crown Heights to several hovels in Bushwick. It was exhilarating. I was finally shocked out of the coma of two years of slaving away in a cubicle and letting my mind atrophy to the point of near total disuse. And I wasn’t about to return to the cube anytime soon. This is the point where I, instead, choose to go on a two-year bender, enjoying life to its work-free fullest with my credit card — my simultaneous salvation and bane. Sure, I would work a few random freelance jobs here and there, including nebulous titles like “community manager,” but I managed to cling to as much free time as I could. Drinking and writing, always my two great loves, were things I could finally focus on again.

My second office job was as an editor for a magazine. If you’ve ever lived in New York, you know that just about anybody with a trust fund can start a magazine. I didn’t mind it, but it also didn’t pay. I count it as part of my office life because I was expected to sit in a room for a certain amount of time and pretend to work. However, maybe there issomething to this not-getting-paid aspect because this was definitely the job I enjoyed doing the most in spite of still having to use my credit card to pay rent and buy food. I also got another small stipend from a writing internship for a pop culture-oriented website, though I eventually stopped going when they insisted that I interview people on the streets of SoHo about their sex lives.

KEEP READING …