by Ruby Jinga

Created on: November 18, 2009

Yes, but only if the answer is also 'yes' to the questions below.

Do you love it more than your day job?

Will you maintain your current lifestyle?

If you won't maintain your current lifestyle, are you willing to live on less?

Will blogging take you where you want to go e.g.. a career in freelance writing?

Do you have the discipline to work on your own and towards your own deadlines?

Can you live without the office camaraderie, assuming you work in an office?

Do you have the support of your partner and family?

Do you have a dedicated working space, maybe a room in the house?

Have you consulted your accountant for the tax side of things, and are you happy with that?

Have you considered the benefits your job provides e.g. paid study leave for professional development and health insurance? How will this be covered when you blog?

If you've answered 'yes' to all of the questions, I'd say go for it.

I have been writing on my personal life blog for just over a year, and my fiction blog for about six months and have earned just under $3 from advertising. Obviously, this is not enough for me to enjoy my current lifestyle and that outweighs how much I do love it.

I would love to be a published writer of fiction. I dream of one day having a book of mine sit on the New Releases shelf in my local bookstore. I can see that writing a blog can be a step in this direction. A good quality blog that attracts enough attention among bloggers may attract an agent. And that may lead to a book deal, a movie deal, a house in the Hamptons.

I would miss the interaction I have with my colleagues, as well as the opportunities being in a large government organisation brings. Things that I take for granted, for example the emails sent informing employees about the measures to take in a heatwave, or notifying us that the Public Sector Week's Living Books event has started at the State Library. And let's not forget the friendly banter exchanged over a cup of tea in the kitchen.

I do not have a dedicated room in the house, which would be the biggest hurdle for me. Currently, I work on my laptop in my bedroom either in bed or at the table where the flat screen TV also sits.

The tax side of things wouldn't make too much difference to me, except that I would have to keep track of what I owe as currently my tax is taken out of my pay every fortnight. I would have to be disciplined enough to put the tax aside in order to be able to pay what I owe when it is due. Alternatively, perhaps I could research the possibility of setting up a company and pay myself as an employee of that company. I would require professional advice before I started doing anything like that.

So, right now, I wouldn't give up my day job in order to work on my blog. It simply doesn't earn enough for me to eat three meals a day. On the day it does, I would seriously consider it.

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