It’s often said that everyone should find joy in what they do for a living. I find joy in editing (and also in writing, although I do only the former as my bread and butter).
I love refining an author’s writing. I like to stamp out typos, grammatical mistakes, and punctuation errors. I love suggesting to an author what would make a sentence or paragraph better. I am helping them. I am helping them get their scientific work published, get their grant funded, or sell their product.
When I was in high school, I tried out to be on the school newspaper staff my senior year and and succeeded. The newspaper’s faculty advisor assigned me the role of copy editor. Besides writing articles for the paper, I copy edited the articles that had already been written and laid out (aside: this was 1991 and the computer layout tools we had were quite primitive compared to those used today). In the middle of that semester, our advisor called me “one of the best [copy editors] we’ve ever had.” Copy editing for the newspaper gave me joy.
So did learning about science.
In college, I majored not in English or journalism but in biology. I wanted to work in a laboratory and do scientific experiments that would improve the health of society at large–in other words, I wanted to help people.
Years later, with a B.A. in biology (the small liberal arts college I attended did not give B.S. degrees at the time) and an M.S. in biochemistry, I ventured into the world of scientific research. I had a number of scientific jobs, and during them, found that not all bosses are nice. I also found that I do not work well when I am bullied. I also found that a few (though not most) people who work in science are ableist, whether they realize it or not. My last two scientific jobs chewed me up and spit me out, and I eventually joined the ranks of the long-term unemployed. Joy was definitely not something I was feeling.
I fell into editing as a profession pretty much unexpectedly. I began doing some editing for the church my husband and I attend, and was regularly complimented on it. (See how powerful words can be?) I also began doing some editing for a local nonprofit. Both of these editing jobs were pro bono. Years into doing this, I got up the nerve to ask my church if they would pay me a little per piece for editing for them. They said yes, and I began to make some money. A month and a half later, I thought, “Why can’t I make money doing this for a living for various clients?” and one month after that, my business was born.
Joy has been back in my life since. Now, I’m not saying there haven’t been a few setbacks. However, I love handing in a finished product and getting positive feedback on it. Of course, I like giving positive feedback as well; otherwise, I would not be a joyful editor.
What do you do professionally that brings you joy?