Out of the office

This summer, I cut my ties with office life and struck out as a freelance writer.

I’ve got two main obsessions - dogs and words. I'm lucky to be able to earn my living by writing, and my ideal job would be to do that while hanging around with my dogs. Freelancing is something I’ve always wanted to do, but leaving office life means making a scary leap into an uncertain world. In the end, as I was preparing to make that jump, I was pushed by my dog.

In June this year, Charlie the whippet (that's him in the picture) collapsed in the garden and lost the use of his legs. We took him straight to the emergency vet who confirmed him as quadriplegic, probably due to a neurological problem in his neck. Charlie was referred to another vet for an MRI scan the next day, revealing a prolapsed disc and some other conditions in the vertebrae of his neck, which had caused damage to his spinal cord. He had major surgery to remove the tops of his vertebrae and decompress the cord.

Charlie refused to eat for most of the six days he spent in animal hospital. Whippets are already naturally slender dogs, so Charlie was a worrying sight, but luckily he started eating properly again as soon as we got him home from the hospital. Then we began a long process of rehabilitation. Charlie had to reroute his neural pathways so he could first roll upright, then stand up and learn to walk again. I had to take him into the garden and hold him upright whenever he wanted to go to the toilet. He’s nearly 12 years old, so as the vets constantly reminded me, his recovery would be slow - in fact, it took over three months of hard work.

At the time, I worked as a writer for a professional membership organisation, and although they were very understanding about me working from home so I could look after Charlie, they wanted me back in the office full-time as soon as possible. But I realised I didn’t want to go back to full-time office work at all. In fact, while it was a job many people would be happy to have, it had already become something of a dead end for me. I had no ambition to gain any kind of a promotion in an office environment. All I wanted to do was earn a living from writing while spending time with my dogs, and suddenly I couldn’t find one good reason why I shouldn’t do that.

So I handed in my notice, and here I am now. Charlie’s story has a happy ending because he’s walking – even running – again, albeit a bit lopsided. But it’s also meant a happy beginning because it’s prompted me to make what I think is one of the best decisions of my life, both as a professional and as a dog-owner.

For all the appeal of freelancing, it does lack the security of a full-time job. It's early days yet and I know there'll be a lot of hard work involved, but so far it hasn't felt that way. And it’s a different world, being at home while everyone else is at work. You get the chance to see a whole other side of the place you live in.

I’ll tell you about how we get on, and many other things, in future posts.