I always go to farming when I can. I always make a failure of it, and then I have to go to teaching. I'm a good teacher but it doesn't allow me time to write. I must either teach or write: can't do both together. But I have to live.
This just about sums up my situation, except that I've never been a committed-enough farmer to get to the point of failing at it. Unexpectedly I had a job interview the other day, for a full-time teaching job that I didn't get. The committee was perfectly right not to offer me this job, and I was so incredibly relieved that I didn't find myself in the position of having to accept it. Nonetheless I spent most of yesterday castigating myself. Why can't I be the sort of person who is perfect for this job? I am, after all, a good teacher, in love with my subject, fond of kids and patient with them, competent at discipline, a quick learner, energetic, idealistic, yet also pragmatic. Why, despite these advantages, is it clear to all the world, including myself, that I am entirely unsuited for real work? Argh.
4 comments:
The story of my life.... except you say it so much more poetically! (p.s. LOVE the Frost quote.)
Space and Grace
I laughed out loud at the part where you say you are entirely unsuited for real work. Oh Sister! I too have had job after job, including teaching jobs in actual colleges. I too have been largely unsuited in that I am not suited to teach what THEY want, in the way THEY want. I am more suited to the writing workshop ... which I do very well I might add. I think that somehow the creative person (especially the poet) is wasted in a traditional classroom. Too confining and we just want to bolt and run outside and write under a tree or sitting waist-deep in a river. My work happens a lot one on one with mentoring other poets. I am happy about this but it pays poorly and erratically. Sigh. More of the starving artist myth. Going to eat lobster today to disprove the myth. LOL
I'd prefer to think you are doing real work; it just happens to be with words.
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