Why did Sherman Alexie only take day jobs?

W: Good Morning, Dr. Sherman Alexie. Let’s talk about your life. Where do you come from?
M: I come from the Raze, an Indian reservation. I grew up there, lived there until 18. I lived on and off the reservation for the next 6 or 7 years during college. I lived there after I graduated and worked at a high school exchange program. I thought I would do that kind of job to support my writing, day jobs that require no emotional investment beyond 8 hours a day where I would not need to bring work home. I did not want to be part of management or anybody important on the job. I wanted to be completely replaceable. That is what I thought I would be doing for most of my life and writing. Then I got a grant and my first book got a front-page review in the New York Times Book Review.
W: When did writing enter your life?
M: Books have always been in my life. My dad loved books and most of what he read were westerns, spy novels, and mysteries. I grew up loving books, copying my dad’s love for books. But nobody had showed me a book written by an Indian, not even one piece of a poem. Nothing. At that time, I was going to be a physician. I loved math and science. I got to college, could not handle physiology, and was looking around for options and took a poetry writing class for fun.
W: Poetry was your way in?
M: Yes, that’s where I got started. I took the class and honestly I thought poetry would be an easy grade. But I completely underestimated poetry and what it would do to me and a realm of possibility for it. I took the class and was hooked about ten minutes after reading my first contemporary poem.