cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm Leaving My Day Job Surprisingly, Trish is ok with this. Once she understood the math she fully embraced the plan. I have given my formal notice and my last day at work will be at the end of August on the 11th anniversary of my first day here. My numbers were wrong. My father checked yesterday afternoon and informed me that my stock is worth quite a bit more than I thought and that I would (will) be paid for it over two years, not one. It works out to pretty close to my current monthly income. Two years. I will have two years in which to do pretty much anything I want (as long as it isn't very expensive). Two years should be long enough to establish myself more fully as a professional author and get enough books into the system to have a stream of income from advances and royalties set up for the following few years. It all starts in about 7 weeks. September will be fucking fantastic. Geese, doves and squirrels will all be in season. I think I'm going to do some one day workshops on squirrels and doves, limited to 4 students each. An hour or so of natural history and ecology on each before going into the field to hunt for the day. In the evening we'll come back to a kitchen and cook what we killed. I think I can charge $75 a head for those. I'll do maybe 3 of those classes in September and make $900 right there. I'll take off for a few days and paddle down the river for a while, fishing, taking a goose or so, and camping on islands. When I get back I'll write a couple of articles, sleeping late every morning. Towards the end of the month I'll take another trip for the new book. Maybe spend a few days on a Chesapeake tributary looking for snakeheads. The more I have thought about it, the more sense it makes to do this right about now. The contract under which I bought the stock over the last decade stipulates that the company is required to purchase the stock from me on my resignation at a price calculated on the basis of the last 3 years of revenue. If I wait until next year then 2007's number drop off of the formula, which will significantly lower the price I am paid for the shares. Now is the time to do it. The contract also says that the company will pay me for the shares at the price calculated at the time of my resignation on a monthly basis over the course of 24 months. Assuming that our health insurance will cost what I am expecting, we will end up with a little bit more income during the first year than I am making as it stands. Plus I will have all the time I could want to make additional money from other sources, like teaching classes and writing magazine articles. Income from book advances is earmarked to go largely into savings for us to live off of after the 2 years is over. I have been thinking of this as essentially a sabbatical. I have really and truly busted my ass for the last 11 years. I'm exhausted. I really gave a lot of my life to this company and I'm very comfortable with the decision that I've come to. This opportunity is too amazing not to take. Two years of freedom, unchained from desks and schedules, in the prime of my life. It feels like taking off a cast from a broken bone. A little part of me is resistant to the change but that is a very small part indeed. I'm going to take road trips to all sorts of places. Maybe drive cross-country. I'd like to try to hustle up enough money to buy a pickup truck with a cap, or maybe a pop-up trailer or something. Get a good inflatable boat so I can pull over and get onto any water that catches my eye. Being able to stay home with the kids more often is also going to be nice. Weekends can be weekends again, since I won't be trying to do 2 full time jobs in the same week. I wish I was going to be changing over this month, so I could go on some trips with the kids before school starts and Ida will be busy most days. 'Quitting' is a word I'm trying to avoid. It feels a little different. I'm 'rising out'. 9:56 a.m. - 2010-07-08 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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