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.

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namanyayg 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

This 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.

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nisegami 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Personally, the line between 'administrator in an insurance company' and Kafka's works fits neatly within my mental model of the world.

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throwawayoldie 6 days ago | parent [-]

Which 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 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		"Inspiration", perhaps.

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throwanem 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Who told you they weren't? Are you only a programmer or a thinker about programming while at keys?

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volkk 6 days ago | parent [-]

i 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)

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6 days ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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throwanem 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

'Another county heard from.'

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throwawayoldie 6 days ago | parent [-]

Thanks for dropping by. No need to hurry back.

	▲	throwanem 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for that substantive contribution.

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jddj 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bukowski: pickle factory for a while then 13ish years at the united states postal service

	▲	volkk 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		and a lot of his work revolves around working at the post office and pickle factory

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Apocryphon 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Anthony Trollope worked at the post office, Andy Weir was a programmer until he hit it big with The Martian.

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rikroots 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wilfred Owen: soldier and poet (whose poetry was ignored/neglected until the 1960s)

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cma 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Robert Frost was an insurance guy or something

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Animats 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

No, 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

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cma 6 days ago | parent [-]

Was thinking of T.S. Eliot

	▲	valm- 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Wallace Stevens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stevens

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throwawayoldie 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Just 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 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Was thinking of T.S. Eliot, worked at Lloyds but in banking not insurance.

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Awesomedonut 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

TIL Kafka worked in insurance... wild!