I am in a really weird phase of my life. I have a job that I have loved for years, but now I had my doctorate and the job that I do have really only requires a bachelors. I find myself growing bored with my day to day life and I feel resentment building when it comes to being unable to stay home with my son and write books all day and teach college classes. It’s a sore spot in my marriage lately and we both feel my overall frustration in feeling stuck in a job that in many ways I have mastered. I am stuck between wanting more and less at the same time.

It’s a weird phase in my life like I said. I also feel really stifled creatively and sometimes when I daydream lately I find myself thinking back to that time in my life when I was newly graduated from college and maybe if I hadn’t pursued this life, maybe if I had just struggled even harder than I did, maybe I would be doing something more along the lines of writing full time and teaching college part-time. I don’t know for sure and I definitely don’t regret the life I have built, but I think I am just at a point where I want to see a change in my professional life that would allow me to be home with my baby more and would challenge me in new ways than teaching hs been lately.

I was excited to receive a galley of Don’t Keep Your Day Job because I thought that it might give me some great advice or some great push towards pursuing something new and exciting in my life. However, there was no great secret to how the author got to where they were and I also found that there was a profound lack of gratitude for the luck and support she received in abandoning the every day 9 to 5 life for the creative life.

I think many of us would like to quit our jobs today and pursue a life that we are passionate about, but with real-life responsibilities like kids, families, mortgages and paying for health insurance…I just didn’t see how I would ever be able to take that leap like so many described in this book. It’s a well-written book and if you like her podcast, this would seem to be a new way to look at it, but for me, I was just disappointed that there wasn’t some magical answer about how I could change my life today. Unlike those that have been able to make careers out of their passions, I do not have a support system…I am my own support system nor do I have the funds to pin together finances while I fight to make a living like I do through teaching. The basis of the book, seemed completely unrealistic to me unless you were someone much younger with access to parents who could financially help you and few to none responsbilities.

Which, I suppose, is more reflective of me than it is of this book. Overall, though, I will stick to listening to the podcast.

Book Information

Don’t Keep Your Day Jobs by Cathy Heller will be released on November 12, 2019, from St. Martin’s Press with ISBN  9781250193605. This review corresponds to an advanced electronic galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.