Sloane Crosley Quotes

Writing was something I always liked, but it wasn't a career until I was laid off from my executive position in my 30s. I started a website because I was bored, unemployed and angry.

Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness - I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full-time.

It was daunting, giving up a regular job for a freelance world, where every day off is a day of unemployment and you are conscious you are not earning. But it was time to take a gamble and see what's on the other side.

The thought of me not having to clock in for a job anymore is something that I can't really put into words, aside from 'amazing' and 'awesome.'

I was a commercial roofer before this, until about age thirty. I will not work others under me and do not want to work under others.

Once you decide to work for yourself, you never go back to work for somebody else.

Writing is self employment, so you can make your own schedule.

I've tried open-ended jobs and found myself incredibly unhappy. I don't like the monomania of showing up every day and doing the same thing. I don't know where my next cheque is coming from, I don't know where my next job is coming from, I have really sketchy health insurance, but I need variety in my life.

I wanted to find something I could do at home. I sat down with a friend and made a list of all the things I could try, and one of them was writing a novel.

I was 37 years old. I wanted to support myself by writing.

Fortunately, I've never had a job.

I didn't think being a writer was a fancy thing. It was a job like any other job, except apparently you could do it at home.

When we moved to Australia in 2008, I decided to try to live off the writing.

I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?

For me, working is the ultimate vacation, for lack of a better word. Its being in-between jobs were it becomes emotional, and brutal, and draining.

I'm not afraid of not working.

When the 'Fight Club' movie was going into production, I quit my job so I could write full-time.

I was almost ready to call it quits - sick of doing a job and then being back on the unemployment line and trying to make ends meet. But I loved acting and didn't know what else to do.

As much as I love my daughters, I wasn't happy with only being a stay-at-home-dad, and my wife encouraged me to try, to really try, at being a writer. More than anything, I didn't want to let her down.

In 2012, when I left MTV, irregular income started.

I don't like not having a job. Especially when I started Mixed Martial Arts, this was all I could do.

I was having a nice anonymous little time as a writer. I really was on the writer path. I was sort of minding my own business. I loved making a living in music.

I know I'm not in government anymore. In fact I'm out of work.

We're in a situation where talented, motivated school leavers and graduates can send off a hundred CVs and not get a reply, and where a trip to the Job Centre is depressing rather than inspirational. And you know what, that just feels wrong.

Really, my biggest risk was just the initial step to quit my day job to do music. I was packaging and shipping for an art gallery in Manhattan; I went to school for painting, so I always wanted to work around artwork, even though I wasn't really contributing anything to the scene.