a new path

I handed in my resignation letter today.

Sometimes I fear I'm about to fall off a cliff (no more pay cheques after August), but I am equally adamant that I need to risk everything in order to fully focus on what I want to do. Placing so much pressure on myself seems to be a nasty habit I've developed. In some ways it might be like launching my own business, but that's a pretty lame and limited way of looking at a new way to live and work (I don't need inner class warfare - just a budget, a plan and to organise myself better)

To jump off a cliff and effortlessly tumble into somersaults takes fearless letting go, practise, climbing back up through failures and falling straight back on your face. And sometimes it might even involve a bit of fun in your flight.

My long suffering friend F sent me this


So You Want To Be A Writer by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.