No quit

Or, why I do my morning pages.

In the last few days I’ve acquired a handful of new subscribers here on Substack. Which is nice. How many of them are real remains to be seen (are there bots here too?) but in the interests of rewarding these readers, I’ve been trawling through my pages, looking for something I could repurpose as a suitable ‘introductory’ post. Most of it’s too rough, though, lacking cohesion, or just downright drivelsome. “Nobody wants to hear the nonsensical ravings of a loud-mouthed malcontent.” That’s according to Ray Patterson, the Steve Martin-voiced character from an episode of the Simpsons, in which Homer becomes sanitation commissioner for Springfield. To which I would reply, “Au contraire, Mister Patterson. Just look around.” Nevertheless, I’ll spare you my embittered rants about the travails of an over-worked school teacher (plenty of that in the press at the moment) and instead present you with this, which only contains a smidgen of that rage…

“It’s 7.13 am and already I feel pressed. I want to get up, go to the gym, or move my body in ungainly fashion along the gravel path beside the canal, in a manner that could loosely be described as “running”. It’s Saturday morning, though, and I have no obligation to do anything other than sit—sit and write my pages. Relaxing is hard, especially when your body is geared towards action, as mine is, five days a week, from the moment my alarm goes off at ten to six. For a moment, then, resist. Resist the urge to move, and just sit. Stay put, here in your chair at the small square table in the coffee shop by the woods, and see what surfaces...

Immediately, a phrase pops into my head: the false spring and other false starts. Hm. That could be the title for a post. It seems appropriate, given that we’re only halfway through February and the sun is shining, and I haven’t written anything for my Substack in weeks. God damn it, I thought I could do this. Post at least once a week, I mean. But just three weeks into the new term, I dropped off. Failed to keep my promise. The day job consumes my free time—by which I mean my writing time. Truth is, it consumes everything. It’s less about time and more about energy, mental and emotional, both of which are required to write. Even at my loosest, stream-of-consciousness, just-write-whatever-man bullshit, there’s still a tax to be paid. And baby, I just don’t got the cash. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but kids are exhausting, and my responsibility to them and their education is not one you can drop, certainly not between the hours of 8 and 4, from Monday to Friday, nor even after, for another couple of hours at least. Or for one full day of the weekend, either, which is when you have to catch up on all the jobs you didn’t get done during the week. And don’t gimme that crap about time management and getting it all done during the working day. That’s just not how this works.

Yeah, yeah. I hear you: boo-hoo. Poor you, Matty. Other people have it just as tough, with as many responsibilities to juggle—if not more. I’m just saying. This job is not conducive to the writing life, whatever that looks like. I’ve known this a long time, of course, and all my friends and colleagues are, I’m sure, bored to death of hearing about it—about my fanciful notions of giving up the day job completely and writing full time.

And yet, here I am. Posting a page of words I scribbled down on a sunny Saturday morning. Truth be told, this could just as easily be a page I wrote while sitting at my desk in a dark classroom before the school day has begun. Before all the jobs I need to do—before the actual working day begins. Before all the printing and photocopying and typing up of a model text for the children to use with their own writing. Before the kids themselves arrive, barrelling down the corridor and into the room; before all the microaggressions and confrontations; before all the incidents and accidents, the friendship issues and playground drama—all of which require my full attention and no small amount of compassion, however petty they may seem. Before teaching five different lessons and delivering an after-school ‘maths booster group’ for a select few kids the Powers That Be have identified as needing such additional support. And that’s before I’ve even thought about tackling the pile of marking I’ve accumulated over the last six hours. After all that, is it any wonder I don’t have the energy to write?

And yet. Here I am. Doing it anyway, every damn day. Stealing a few minutes, each morning, to exercise the writing muscles. The trick, if there is one, at this stage — for me, at least — is to do it for yourself. For fun. For the muscle-building practice. Hell, for the few moments of quiet it gives me, when every fibre in my body is yelling at me to move, be productive, or consume.

Last night, I saw a post on Instagram with a quote from Charles Bukowski. Say what you like about that guy, but he gives good quote—especially for writers like me. In fact, come to think of it, that quote may have been the impetus I needed to do my pages this morning, though I’m only just recalling it. Anyway, the quote, which can be found *quickly checks the ‘gram* on the account writeyourselfalive, runs as follows: “Nothing can save you, except writing. It keeps the walls from failing, the hordes from closing in. It blasts the darkness. Writing is the ultimate psychiatrist, the kindliest god of all the gods. Writing stalks death. It knows no quit. And writing laughs at itself, at pain. It is the last expectation, the last explanation.”

It’s that line in the middle I like best: writing knows no quit. Because neither do I. I won’t quit. Not ever. Whether or not I ever escape this hamster wheel existence, I wouldn’t know how. So, even if I’m not here, posting on Substack with any sort of regularity, rest assured I’m writing — mostly drivel, but sometimes not — whenever I can, but mostly in the morning.