Pondering the day job

When I moved to New York almost two months ago, I got an easy little sales associate job at a nice national-chain home furnishings store. The pay was Not good but I figured I'd get something to replace it or add to it - something that would bring in the "real bucks" - pretty soon after that. Well, in this time I have not taken on another job, nor have I very aggressively pursued it. And having discovered yesterday that after 60 days of 30 hours a week at this job, I'll get medical and dental insurance, I'm starting to think about settling in for a while. Though the pay is, as I said, not good, the management at my job is great - very agreeable and flexible - my co-workers are cool; the environment is rarely stifling, often above-tolerable, and sometimes even very pleasant (depending on the day, the customers, and my mood).

Somehow the idea of health benefits, combined with the knowledge of how this job had complemented my music-interests schedule so far, is hugely comforting to me. What have I to lose to just put in the time and hours to get those benefits, hang on to this job as long as it allows me to scrape by financially, and then be able to keep working on the music stuff as I have been up to this point? And I can always take on an additional little something-or-other job to fill 15 hours a week if I'm feeling the crunch. OR, Even Better: I can work on getting out a little EP to sell at gigs. I was going to release an EP last summer. I held off on it because of the move and because I was given some advice to just focus on a demo and promo kit and not bother with marketing something directly to the public. The person who gave me that advice is pretty much out of the picture now, and I need to make some decisions again from an independent-musician standpoint.

So, I think I choose the $8/hour easy job that gives me time and energy to spare, and with that extra time and energy I'll work on securing the gigs and getting some product together to sell!