Today is my last day as a lawyer. Today, I officially quit my dayjob. Whatever happens after this, I am fairly certain this day will live in infamy in the timeline of my life.

I’ve always thought the biggest defect in our educational system is this dogmatic adherence to the idea that children should have some idea of what they want to do with their life before they finish school. When you’re in high school, everything is about getting into a good college. By the end of your freshman year, you have to choose a major. By the end of your second year, get an internship. Everything after that is about finding a job. So from the time you’re an idiotic, self-obsessed, petulant teenager, you’re supposed to start making decisions about what you’ll be doing the rest of your life. I turn 30 this year, and I still don’t really know what I want to do with my life, petrified that decisions I make today will trap me into some sort of career path that I won’t be able to extricate myself from before another ten years of my life passes me by.

When I decided to go to law school, I thought it was the safe, secure, responsible thing to do. Not just for myself, for the benefit of my family to a large degree. And I took the opportunities I had at the time to be a writer and a musician and put them away, as childish things for a more childish time. And I soldiered through 3 years, approximately $100K in student loans, and procured a pretty good living as an attorney. And for some strange reason, I could not understand why I was so horrifically depressed for the first year and a half I worked. Gee, who could’ve guessed.

I’ve always believed there are two kinds of people in the world. On one side, there are people who have hobbies. The activities they do in their free time are net positives; meaning, without these hobbies, they’d be at zero. And they’d probably be fine working the job they do, living the life they lead. On the other side, there are people who have passions. The passions are what get them to zero; without these passions, they will always live life at a net negative. And they will always be miserable. As a person who falls into the latter category, I never truly understood what it meant to be miserable until I pushed away the things that had always been around. The things that simply made me happy. And I looked at other people, who bemoaned that they wished they could “find a hobby,” and wondered what they meant. If I had the time and energy for another activity, I already have a list of about 20 other things I’d love to sink my teeth into. I don’t get how people can’t simply find anything to do, given the time and opportunity. It baffles me.

We make a big deal about following your dreams, doing what makes you happy. But that’s a lie, isn’t it? When have you ever been told to follow a dream, to do only what makes you happy? You’re told to be smart, responsible, to do the safe thing. You’re told to not follow your dreams, because your dreams are stupid and idiotic, foolish and unlikely. You’re told that no one really loves their job. Instead, you do the responsible thing, because getting that job that truly makes you happy is simply too “hard.”

I have no illusions that what I’m about to do won’t be hard. Having spent the better part of the last year constantly writing and recording music, trying to get my music out there, wrangling people to help me out, trying to make a tour come together and doing all of it with hardly any real experience has been hard. Trying to not constantly doubt my choices, not fear the future, not doubt my own talents and my ability to make this happen to any small extent: that’s damn near terrifying on a daily basis. It’s all I can do to stay sane, and not freak out and hide in my bedroom Howard Hughes style, with jars of my own urine surrounding me (“the way of the future”).

And then I remember this: why the ever living hell would I expend this much energy, pain, and effort on something if I didn’t love it? If it wasn’t one of those things that keep me at zero. I am as fickle person as you’ll ever meet. And the only thing I have done consistently over the past decade-plus of my life is write lyrics and make music. Hell, if you count my days with my guitar, it probably goes back almost twenty years. That blows my mind. This stuff is important to me, not just the way it comes across to others listening to it, or any semblance of fame or credit I get for making music (though trust me, I love that shit too). I love the idea of creating something that says something. I love bucking expectations of what rap music can be, because I love what it represents: a culture that was so beaten down and ignored by society, that DJs and b-boys and emcees would move a crowd and rock a party to make people forget the pain of life. To just feel good. To be happy. Whatever permutation of rap music you’ve come to think of when you think of this genre, that’s where it began. Life was shit, and the music made people happy. And at the very least, I can promise you that kind of respect and love for the genre will ALWAYS be there in the music I create. Whether that will be enough to pay the bills, well…we’ll see about that.

So here I am, with a packed up office and a little scratch in the bank ready to give this a try. To follow my dream, to dedicate at least the next year of my life to the only thing I’ve ever been faithful to throughout most of my adult life…to get back to zero. At this moment, I don’t know how I’ll make consistent income, I honestly don’t know if this will work, and I quite frankly am pretty terrified, of screwing up the album, of no one liking it, of nothing working out. But I have to say, being scared out of my mind constantly is  better than feeling miserable on a daily basis, and is infinitely better than feeling like I never even tried. And maybe in 12 months, I’ll be back in an office at a job I hate, doing a mediocre job and living life to the bare minimum, paying off credit card balances and student loans for the rest of my life. But maybe, just maybe there’s some small, infinitesimal chance that this works and I can do something that makes me happy for the rest of my life, in one form or another. And y’know what? I’m okay with those odds. I’ve been feelin’ lucky lately.

So here’s to you, dayjob. At the very least, you reminded me that I simply couldn’t do this anymore; that sometimes, there’s a reason to do the completely foolish, stupid, and crazy thing in life. I’ll toast to you, but I won’t miss you at all. And to everyone out there reading this, get ready…

Now the hard part begins.