It’s done.

On Wednesday, I sold my condo and gave notice at my well-paid, com­fort­able, secure, government-job-for-life. Every­thing I own is in a storage locker, and I’m living on my friend’s couch out of a couple of sea bags. This Tuesday, I’ll shift to my buddy Pete’s couch and start apart­ment hunting in Brooklyn. Once I’m set­tled there, I’ll get a part time job a couple of days a week and go about the busi­ness of ded­i­cating myself full time to building a career as a writer.

I’m absolutely terrified.

By any rea­son­able stan­dard, I am self-destructing. I am walking away from secu­rity and wealth in the midst of a world rocked by reces­sion and war. I am putting my faith in an industry marked by capri­cious­ness and tur­moil. I’m not sure how hard this sta­tistic is, but I heard once that less than 4% of writers with book deals with major New York houses (like mine) can make a full time living at it. This move is, by all accounts, nuts.

So let’s scratch the sur­face a bit here: I’ve crammed in a lot of living for a guy under 40. I worked in a range of fields before I set­tled on armed public ser­vice. I was suc­cessful in every one of them. By the time I was 27, I owned a house with a white picket fence in one of the priciest sub­urbs in Northern Vir­ginia. I owned a Mer­cedes and went on Euro­pean vaca­tions at least once a year.

I was beyond miserable.

When I look back at my oper­a­tional tours, crammed into con­verted conex boxes or hot racking on a storm tossed cutter, with even less belong­ings than I have avail­able to me right now, I am always struck by the sig­nif­i­cance of the expe­ri­ence. Was I happy? Not really, but I was alive. I was hip-deep in the res­o­nance of a life lived sig­nif­i­cantly. It is those expe­ri­ences, not the lazy Sunday after­noons spent watching my big screen TV in my air con­di­tioned living room, that ring in me, that drive me for­ward, that leave me satisfied.

Because, over the years, I have come to the con­clu­sion that my life has to be about some­thing. For a lot of people, I think that “some­thing” is family; loving a spouse, raising chil­dren. Maybe, if I’m very, very lucky, it will be for me too someday. But for now, that isn’t the case, and I’m not going to count on it. For a while, I got that sense of pur­pose, of sig­nif­i­cance, from public ser­vice of the most dan­gerous breed. If I’m exposing myself to emul­si­fied oil, or rocket fire, then others don’t have to, and so I can look in the mirror each morning and say “I have lived rightly.” I go to bed every night in mortal terror of Erickson’s “Final Stage,” of being able to look down the long years and nod con­tent­edly, to face the ques­tion of the angels in the Muslim Pun­ish­ment of the Grave (from the al-Bukhari Hadith) “What have you done?”

Here’s the point: I’m most com­fort­able when I’m uncom­fort­able. My life has to be about some­thing more than paying a mort­gage. I have to mark the world.

And that means taking risks. Big risks. Risks that, to someone who doesn’t know me, seem incred­ibly foolish.

It’s not like I totally lack a plan here. I’ve got enough saved to live without any income for about three years (albeit very fru­gally). Because of the reserves, I have some guar­an­teed income and the free­lance artist’s holy grail; health insur­ance. My resume is solid. I have com­pet­i­tive fed­eral hiring status (front of the line priv­i­leges for a gov­ern­ment job). Any time I want, I can raise my hand and go on active duty.

But yeah, I’m still ter­ri­fied. It’s a big leap, with no guar­an­tees that I’ll fly, or that any­thing will break my fall if I don’t.

But you know what? Three spins in Iraq didn’t kill me. Some­thing tells me this won’t either.

So, for now, I’m bal­ancing that fear with cau­tious opti­mism, with excite­ment, with determination.

Since I was a little boy, I’ve wanted to be a full time fan­tasy writer. I can’t say whether or not I will be suc­cessful in this endeavor. I can’t pre­dict how the chips will fall.

But I’m not going to go to my grave won­dering what would have hap­pened if only I’d tried.

Life’s for the living, they say. That’s what I intend to do.

Hang with me, folks. Here we go.