Your Skills: Use Them to Best Effect

If the best part of your day job involves the skills you use, are building or can learn OTJ, figure out how those skills can do double duty by benefiting your after-hours vocation as well. Here's a list of common bread-and-butter jobs and some of the job skills you can "borrow": 

Administrative Assistant, Office Assistant & other clerical work

• Organizing time, office space & information: who doesn't need to keep up with these tasks? 
• Bookkeeping or payroll: you'll really be thankful for these skills if you start making money selling your art!.
• Phone or in-person reception skills: channel your Inner Diplomat when negotiating with agents.
• Multitasking: you may hope to avoid this when writing but you never know when you'll need it.

Sales Associate

•  "People" skills, any & all: after a day of being inundated with temperamental customers, you might be hoping that your next big life as a full time author will be people-free; however, if you're successful you'll still have to deal with agents and publicists (traditional route) or vendors and customers (DiY publishing, indie music, etc).
• Marketing and sales skills: even if you end up nabbing the best agent in town, it's likely you'll still have to do much of your own promo. Working the floor can help you hone the gift of gab you may need to be successful at author events, art openings and so on.

Restaurant, Retail or Manufacturing

• Managing your energy: if you work on your feet all day, you've probably developed various ways to manage your physical and mental energy. Consciously practicing this and noting what works will give you an edge on any hectic day.
• Cultivating patience: even  if you have no plans to try selling your screenplay, getting a grant for your community project or finding paying gigs, this will come in handy. And if you do have plans, you'll need as much patience as you can muster since most projects take time to yield results.
• Dealing with boredom: when you plateau (and we all do at some point), being able to set aside the "This isn't fun anymore" feelings and plow through your rewrite/query list/edits/tedious technical work will eventually take you to the next level.

I've left out many job types such as are in the healthcare field because I'm not familiar enough with them to write knowledgeably. But trying to pinpoint even one skill that could be useful as you pursue your dream will provide motivation to keep moving on.