“I Quit” (first in a series)

“I wear a watch for curiosity’s sake only.” – Dean Jackson

That’s it, I quit.

As of right now, right here in front of everybody (with you, dear reader, as my witness and my friend) I’m officially quitting my job.

That probably sounds weird.

I mean, can you really quit your job when your unemployed?

Can you really quit your “job” when you haven’t actually HAD a job for over 5 years?

Way back in 2005 I got laid off from a gig writing sappy animal-based greeting cards for a living . . .

It was a BAD gig. The owners (Pat and Gabe) were a couple of old married farts who treated their employees like their children (just not like children who they actually liked) and who were prone to random insults and screaming rages at the drop of something that gets dropped a lot . . .

One by one we employees either quit, got fired or got “laid off” . . . and one by one we all went to the state and reported the place as a “Hostile work environment.”

When it was my turn to face the axe I had a bit of a nervous breakdown.

Actually, I did more than that. I sat in my car in the parking lot and cried, cried, cried like a puppy who cries a lot.

After all, there I was, 26-years old, unemployed, unemployable, no sellable skills, no real ambitions and about as much accumulated self worth as you can fit on a postage stamp.

I was in a bad way.

And it got worse a week later.

That’s when I “Intercepted” an email from Pat (the crazier and meaner of my two bosses)  telling a vendor that I hadn’t been laid off after all . . .

“Chris has had to take a leave of absence,” read Pat’s strange, lying email. “First because of his upcoming wife’s West Nile virus, but now because of his own upcoming MRI.”

When I read that I had a fit.

I raged to my girlfriend of the time (we weren’t getting married, I didn’t have a brain tumor but I think I came close to a heart attack after reading that email.)

It’s like something deep in the core of me just SNAPPED . . .

Like all those years of slumping from crappy, badly-paying job to crappy, badly-paying job had finally worn through to my soul.

So right then and there  I made a resolution  that I would NEVER work for anybody else again.

That I would NEVER have to put my fate in the hands of some megalomaniacal whack job with a smokers gasp and a bad haircut.

And from there things went pretty well.

I started doing that “copywriting” thing, mostly working for corporate clients at first (and making piddling amounts of moolah barely enough to pay the rent.)

And then about 3 years ago I stumbled on this “Direct Response Copywriting” thing and wham, bam, WHAMMO, WOW did things change.

Suddenly $20k and even $30k months became the NORM (my total salary at my last “real job” was just $24,000.00 a year . . . I lived LEAN.)

Suddenly I was hot-shotting around the country in big flying machines, hobnobbing with millionaires, getting asked for advice from GIANTS of the industry and cranking out sales copy for the biggest and the best.

For a while there it was FUN.

It was like a video game where the keyboard was my shotgun and customers were the endless zombie hordes. All I had to do was pull the trigger, line up the conversions and I’d be rewarded with big fat checks that I didn’t even really know what to do with.

Suddenly I had a “name” and was on a pretty short list of copywriters to call when the copy had to be hot and sizzling and the conversions had to be through the roof.

But lately . . . well, lately I haven’t been having as much fun.

For every project that thrills and fulfills me and makes me do backflips of joy there have been five more that I take because I feel like I “have to” . . . because the money is “too good” or because I feel like I’m supposed to be chasing down wealth like a horny werewolf on prom night.

And for the last year or so that aspect of my gig (there’s a lot of other stuff that I actually really like) has begun to wear me down.

Too many whackjobs calling me up offering me “$4 Billion Dollars if you are to use your magic fingers of moneymaking to help me sell my wonderful idea.” (True story.)

Too many “Big dreamers” wondering why I can’t see THE BRILLIANCE OF THEIR BUSINESS IDEA and WHY WON’T YOU WRITE THIS FOR ME FOR FREE?

Too many scammers, too many demons, too many fools.

Too many days spent in a non-productive haze, bouncing from Facebook to Twitter to my latest writing project, to the blog to the phone trying to eke out just a LITTLE BIT of productivity and feeling (at the end of it all) that I’m no closer to my actual goal.

Over the last year or so (and it’s been a HARD year here in Haddonia, full of heartbreak and shame and experiences I would only wish on my worst enemies.) . . .

Over the last year or so the way I do “business” has begun to feel way too much like a JOB.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 32 years it’s that I’m BAD at having jobs. I’ve been fired or laid off from every JOB I had (and with good reason). So I’m going to jump the gun and quit this one while I can.

So let me say it again, this time in French so my Canadian friends can understand . . .

“J’ai stoppe’”

Now, does this mean I’m getting out of the “marketing game?”

Am I going to go join a monastery and take up Flamenco guitar?

Nope. Fact is I really LIKE selling stuff.

I’m just going to be a LOT more selective about who I sell stuff FOR . .  .

About how I get PAID for what I help sell . . .

About what KIND of stuff I sell (no more crap in a box, kids.)

And I’m going to spend as much of my time, effort and energy as possible building up my own businesses, websites and assets so I can finally get off the “where’s the next project” hamster wheel for real and actually RELAX, focus on my passions enjoy myself while I’m still pretty young.

In other words, I’m going to stop building a “job,” eliminate the “fear” that’s been plaguing me for the last couple years and start building the lifestyle business I’ve wanted all along.

Like a whole lot of other people, I’m using Tim Ferris’ excellent book “The Four Hour Work Week” as my guidepost for this.

This is the first in a series of posts I’ll be writing as I dig into Ferris’ book “for real” (I read it the first time several years back with little impact), call in my friends to be on my “advisory board,” radically reduce self-limiting and procrastibatury behaviors and charge as hard as I can towards the lifestyle I want.

It’s gonna be fun. Come along for the ride.

Tune in in a couple days for my next post: “Death of the Info Slut.”

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