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Other examples: Baruch Spinoza, lensmaker by day, philosopher by night. Philip Glass: moving man, plumber, cab driver, and avant-garde composer. E. E. "Doc" Smi
by throwawayoldie 1y ago
Other examples: Baruch Spinoza, lensmaker by day, philosopher by night. Philip Glass: moving man, plumber, cab driver, and avant-garde composer. E. E. "Doc" Smith: food engineer and science fiction writer. Franz Kafka: administrator in an insurance company, and writer of history's weirdest books. Wallace Stevens: insurance company executive and poet. William Carlos Williams: doctor and poet. And these are just off the top of my head.
- jddj 1y agoBukowski: pickle factory for a while then 13ish years at the united states postal service
- volkk 1y agoand a lot of his work revolves around working at the post office and pickle factory
- namanyayg 1y agoThis is messing with my head. I love Spinoza and Kafka and couldn't imagine them as anything else but being full-time thinkers and writers.
- throwanem 1y agoWho told you they weren't? Are you only a programmer or a thinker about programming while at keys?
- volkk 1y agoi think by full time they meant sitting around in some dingy room, smoking cigarettes and positing/thinking rather than filling most of their days with other activities that have nothing to do with this craft (and i would say to posit well, you need life experiences and they did exactly what they needed to do to become legendary)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throwanem 1y ago'Another county heard from.'
- throwawayoldie 1y agoThanks for dropping by. No need to hurry back.
- throwanem 1y agoThanks for that substantive contribution.
- nisegami 1y agoPersonally, the line between 'administrator in an insurance company' and Kafka's works fits neatly within my mental model of the world.
- throwawayoldie 1y agoWhich makes me wonder what he called the kind of experience a person has when dealing with an insurance company: the word "Kafkaesque" didn't exist yet.
- gjm11 1y ago"Inspiration", perhaps.
- Apocryphon 1y agoAnthony Trollope worked at the post office, Andy Weir was a programmer until he hit it big with The Martian.
- cma 1y agoRobert Frost was an insurance guy or something
- throwawayoldie 1y agoJust took a look at Wikipedia. No mention of insurance, but he did write much of his early work while farming during the day. As did Robert Burns.
- cma 1y agoWas thinking of T.S. Eliot, worked at Lloyds but in banking not insurance.
- Animats 1y agoNo, Frost was a teacher and a farmer to make money.[1] Tom Clancy was an insurance agent. [1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Frost https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Frost
- rikroots 1y agoWilfred Owen: soldier and poet (whose poetry was ignored/neglected until the 1960s)
- Awesomedonut 1y agoTIL Kafka worked in insurance... wild!