I used to work for a living

What happened was this. Walking back to the office after lunch one lost summer day, I had a small personal epiphany. A significant truth came to me. I stopped walking. Standing under a leafy tree, I thought hard about this truth, which was this:

I hated my job

My heart was pounding. I was going back to face more of the office politics and point-scoring and false fellow-feeling that I’d had to endure for years. I hadn’t realised how stressed it was making me. But I knew there and then that I couldn’t do it any more. I had to get out or I’d drop down dead one day.

I just knew it

A few days later I wrote a farewell note for my manager and put it in his desk. It said nothing much beyond the fact that I was leaving and not coming back. He was probably glad to see the back of me. I’m not good at hiding unhappiness. I put my laptop and my security pass and all the important trivialities of work in the drawer of my desk and walked out of the building. Standing outside the front door of the last place I will ever work, I had the last cigarette I will ever smoke. Then I got in the car and drove home. I’ve never worked for anyone since then. Or smoked.

And I’ve never regretted either decision

Now, I live for me. This site is a collection of my work; free to read short stories and poetry, in my portfolio and blog posts. After years of doing what other people told me to do, I can now do what I choose.

I choose to write

You will gather from the ‘free to read short stories and poetry’ strapline that I make little or no money from Writing Me Up. That may change, but that’s not why I do it. I do it because I can. Because it’s personal.

And I love it

You can find me in other places.

On Twitter at https://twitter.com/araykay

On Tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/writingmeup

Come and have a look – you know you want to.

• Timothy Leary
  "Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."
• Jackie Kennedy
  "The one thing I do not want to be called is First Lady. It sounds like a saddle horse."
• Helen Hayes
  "Age is not important unless you're a cheese."
• H. L. Mencken
  "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."