I love to refer to myself as gainfully unemployed. It is both true, and untrue.
I work as an IT person for a local online news outlet, the owensoundhub.org, but I’m contracted to them. I end up spending less then ten hours a month at that. But I interact with the organization and I learn lots of things about my community.
I also still do the odd job for friends that need help with their renovations or their construction.
I can also be found doing a fair bit of volunteer work, mostly for Summerfolk.
But there are other things I do …
I also often apply for some of the stranger jobs that don’t last long. I work for the government when they have elections. Provincial or Federal, I don’t care. I’ve run computer balloting machines and I’ve overseen paper ballots as well. I enjoy getting paid for such things.
This year I also signed up for the census, it was a strange year to be going door to door in brutal heat, double masked and with a heart issue, but I’m that guy who enjoys challenging myself when I’m up to it.
Additionally I treat all of life as an adventure, and that means I often do things on a whim that others might not try.
Why do I do these things?
Well, the short answer, for the ones that pay, is for the money. And I likely wouldn’t do them if they didn’t pay. But the real answer is that I get an education no matter what job or activity I take on.
I learn about me. I learn what I’m willing to do and then I learn what I’m willing to do twice. I learn about people and their attitudes toward things. Mostly I learn of their attitudes toward the government, but often even that is telling. And I learn other things about them as well, some things from observation and some from their announcements and pronouncements.
And I store those things away!
I am not allowed to repeat anything I learn about other people while doing a government job. I’ve taken several oaths and none of them say, “Whatever you hear you are free to talk about.” In fact, they all say the exact opposite.
I am allowed to talk about anything I learn about myself though.
And the things I learn about me and other people tell me how far reality’s boundaries stretch. They tell me what is real and what is plausible and where those two realms intersect. (Have you ever noticed that the root of the word “realm” is “real?”)
And when I write …
When I write fiction, I want it to be plausible, I want it to seem real. And I have this wealth of reality roiling and boiling around inside my head. I’ve taken a survey of humanity and determined it to be a wonderful kaleidoscope of the wildest and weirdest things imaginable.
I have plumbed the depths of the human race and it makes me fall in love with it as an entity, makes me hate it with passion, makes me laugh and makes me cry. It makes me pay attention.
And when I write, that’s what I want my words to do for my readers. So I will take these experiences and I will take my imagination, and I will mix them into my big cauldron of words and I will do my poor but honest best to put these things together and create things worthy of your reading time.
And if you write …
If you’re a writer, you could do worse than to get out there and engage with this world whenever such opportunities arise. Assist your community. Embed yourself within it. Study it. Make notes. Do not write about specific people or their personal details, but take a mash up of it all and pull from that the characters and actions and maybe even the occasional plot.
And write. Grab hold of life … and write about it!
