One of my favourite authors is asleep on the bed beside me. As I write this, she is sleeping off her jetlag from the trip between New York and Sydney. When she wakes, I will ask her to her sign my copies of her books. Then, she will write, and I will edit for my day job. Between bouts of focus, we will catch each other’s eyes and derail that carefully cultivated focus into conversations about this specific plot point or that particular narrative technique. Tonight, we will go to dinner with some of our favourite authors, people who have changed the trajectory of our lives as young people in publishing. Trust me, I am equally as, if not more, disbelieving than you are that this is my life.

Of course, this life does not come without sacrifice. You can’t help developing this strange feeling of apathy when your personal and professional lives are so closely entwined. Everything I do for fun seems to lead me back to work, and everything I do for work seems impossibly, addictively fun. The lines blur. When I cut one, it bleeds into the other. I can no longer feel the seams between work and pleasure, between fatigue, joy, regret, and some other emotion that feels too big for my body to hold. Triumph? Fear? I feel like I am racing against the clock with every book, every word, I read. Or don’t read. How long can I do this before crumbling under the pressure of an industry that is too white, too straight, too narrow, to support the voices of people like me? But that is a story for another day. This is a story about doing what you love for work and loving it, despite the work.