What Moves You?

I am a Year 13 form tutor this year, which means helping kids work on their UCAS applications and writing their statements.  I also have to write a statement about each of the 20+ tutees.  Now, I spend quite a lot of time thinking about the paths people pursue, anyway.  I have a couple of songs which are about leaving behind something worth being remembered for, or about how you would feel if this was your last day.  They are songs which prompt deep musings about what I actually value and whether sitting in a traffic jam near Bawtry on my way to wrestle young minds into writing an essay is really something I will look back on and feel deeply fulfilled by. 

In many ways, it is.  Not so much the traffic thing.  More the teaching and, specifically, teaching English thing.  I love my subject.  I honestly can’t (not don’t – can’t) understand people who teach a subject they don’t love.  I have heard teachers say that Macbeth is boring (this said by a member of management, thankfully not from my school, in front of students to whom I was about to teach said text), or that sentence structures are boring (well, maybe if you don’t know how to manipulate them for effect, they can be – a bit…  Actually, no.  They should not be boring to an English teacher.  You can be bored by whatever bores you, but why choose to teach it if you don’t like the basic building blocks of it?), and so on.  To me, none of this is boring.  Frustrating, sometimes, yes, when kids aren’t grasping it and you have broken it down and delivered it in fifty ways already.  Even more so when they aren’t trying to learn it.  That is not the same as unfulfilling, though.

For me, it is more a case of wanting to collect more experiences in my life.  A lot of the paperwork and so on in any job is soul-destroying.  There are other things you could be doing with your life. 

At York, I went to the SciFi masterclass workshop with Gary Gibson, and he spoke at length, whilst pacing up and down and losing paperwork (I think he would teach the same way I do) about people who make it as writers having decided that writing is the most important thing to them.  He told us about a friend who lives abroad in countries where the money he earns for ‘writing about dwarves hitting other dwarves over the head’ will pay for him to live in a series of hotels.  And loves it.  Because writing about said dwarves is all he wants to do in life. 

I say, more power to him.

I plucked up the courage to go and tell Gary that I had found this workshop to be the most laid-back inspirational speech I have ever encountered.  I think I got a smile.  Hard to say – daring to speak to people when I feel I may be intruding tends to detach my brain a bit, so that I feel I am only loosely tethered to my own life. 

In any case, it was yet another little reminder that checking my priorities regularly might be a good idea.  No – is a good idea.

I read a fantasy novel once about a shape-shifter (never did read book 3, Jules, by the way, so if you can remind me which series it is…) and the most memorable line, for me, was when the MC kept facing impossible odds, meaning she could never reach her goal, and thought to herself ‘redefine winning’.  She changed her goal (a lot – pretty sure she then leapt of the top of a waterfall – might not be my exact plan) and went on.

Much though I would love to add ‘shape-shifting’ to my ‘to do’ list, I perhaps will just take the idea of redefining what a ‘win’ is for me, as and when it is needed. 

I already have the black and white Border collie (finally – I only read Shadow the Sheepdog when I was, what, six?  Seven?  Hard to say.  In the only picture we have of me reading it, I am holding it upside down.  Though this one can’t herd sheep.)  I have a challenging job, which includes my degree subject.  I have a degree, come to that.  Got married.  Got a house.  Got another house.  Finally sold the first house.  (Thank the gods – not the estate agents – not sure they had anything to do with it, come the end.)  Got an orangery – which is fabulous, by the way.  I’ve tried a few hobbies, made a few friends, been brave and gone to the York festival.  Had conversations at 1am in the bar at York about bad monster movies…  Plenty of stuff, really. 

There is something still needed, though, and perhaps it will never be ticked off entirely, because I am not sure at what point I could say it was done.  It most definitely involves writing.  I am reliably informed by friends who are published that this is not the end, and you will slip back into doubt and desire all over again, but I think I will aim for that goal of being published first, and see where I go from there.

If today really was my last day, I would want to be able to have ‘author’ in my list of achievements.  I mean, I’ve already ticked off ‘be involved in creating the concept for a jellyfish based SciFi monster movie’, so it’s all downhill from there.  Got to do something to fill in the time until I can watch the SciFi channel get that filmed, preferably with actors from Stargate, Supernatural and Buffy.