Kitsgal wrote:

“I wish this was just the Prologue to the book of your adventures to come.”

This was one of only two comments on my first piece published in the Globe and Mail, October 25, 2018.  Whoever you are Kitsgal , I love you.  I love you deeply.  You believe in me? I believe in me!  You want me to write a book? I want to write a book!  You are hoping I am off on an adventure? I am hoping to find excitement and adventure too!  We should be friends; good friends, share-a-pizza friends, send-birthday-memes-friends. Call me?

You won’t call though.  And while this is only the beginning of our pretend relationship Kitsgal, I fear it has to come to an abrupt end.  I am going to disappoint you. You had such high hopes for me and I am sad to say, I just can’t live up to your standards. It’s time you knew. The adventure you thought I was on has taken a turn.

Brace yourself.  This is about to get real.

I’ve been supply teaching.  

Please let me explain.

When a fellow writer, now my mentor, informed me that one of my pieces inspired her to look at her own practice of writing (gawd I will do anything to pat myself on the back.  My arm is killing me), I was thrilled. She said “ I am still looking for my writing to support me when I should be looking to support my writing …”. I was over the moon thinking I had inspired someone to rethink their approach to work and creativity. She was writing professionally and in my eyes, living the dream.  In her eyes, I was wide open, no professional commitments, I could pursue my passion project and write whatever I wanted. A little ‘grass-is-greener’ moment between us. Writing for other people is decidedly a different experience than writing for yourself. She saw my freedom, I saw her status.

In the time it takes for the sun to burn off a morning fog, my ego and self-congratulatory thoughts disappeared.  I became stuck on her words;  “still looking for my writing to support me when I should be looking to support my writing”. Hmmmmm.  I was jumping around hungry for writing jobs, anything, words, I’ll do it! Happy to be free of the stress of full time teaching so my mind could be empty, wander, create.  I was composing content marketing, writing webisodes for a family competition show, working for an international film festival, writing personal essays for print, writing online reviews, top ten’s and of course, this blog.  This all seemed pretty good. My writing was supporting my life.

Oooops.

My mentor’s words had struck a chord in me and reality had set in like a cranky toddler bursting into a library; it disrupted the peace, pulled all the books off the shelf and screamed in my face. The dream of having my first novel published within a year and going into production on the film version shortly after had been sidetracked by paying gigs; writing for other people.  Life, that blubbering toddler, had hijacked my romantic notion of sitting peacefully in seclusion and writing. It had instead lured me into the seductive world of selling my work. ‘Life’, that requires shelter, groceries, and footwear was wiping its nose on my pant leg. If you are thinking I don’t need any more shoes, may I remind you I did not ask your opinion. And for the record, there is no such thing as ‘too many shoes’.  I’ve researched this personally.

I left my job and a community of support to live in my head for zero dollars.  Upon close examination, leaving my job was actually the only thing that changed.  My 3 kids, my house, cottage, cars and our daily expectation to eat, be artificially warmed or cooled, be clothed and have the hydro bill paid, because heaven forbid we can’t charge the 101 devices we have in our house, still remained. It isn’t totally fair to take away my income and expect others to sacrifice.  I’m still struggling to decide if I want to sacrifice.  Whatever my income contributed to would now be lacking.  I don’t do ‘lacking’.

So deciding to get paid for writing was not a difficult one.  Money is my friend, more so than Kitsgal. It really is exciting to know people have read your words, words that may have started a conversation, inflamed an opinion, or given someone a chuckle but, was I writing that novel or screenplay?  Short answer - no. At present, I do not have a manuscript or a spec script to sell. Because I’ve been working!

These ‘ writing jobs’ are just that;  jobs. Jobs that occupy my day. I hear of legendary people who wake up at 4 am to sit alone on the floor of their closet for the quiet time needed to write their epic stories.  The only time I’ve seen the inside of my closet at 4 am is when I fell in there accidentally after returning home from a New Years event. I still don’t know for sure if it was my closet but I know it was a closet.  

Stealing away that coveted quiet time to write is a fanciful notion that whizzes around my head like a house fly; it buzzes, gets close, when I swing for it, it somehow escapes me.

The secret is to have an income and time to write simultaneously.  But how?

Ding ding ding.  Supply teaching.

Horrible.  Horrible. Horrible.  This is where I enter “suffering for my art” territory.  Right now I am trying to figure out if I would rather cut off an ear or continue supply teaching.  This is not the adventure Kitsgal or I had in mind.  The requirements of this unprofessional profession are this:  show up, take attendance, and prevent children, in my case, highschoolers, from burning the building down or engaging in unwanted touching - either aggressive or reproductive - that’s it. All the while I can be writing, creating stories on my computer, getting paid and once in a while look up from my laptop to play my part; glasses down, whiny voice, “Hey guys, if you want to talk to your elbow partner, please whisper.”  Same script for every class. Aaaaand…. scene.

A supply teacher is gum at the bottom of the educational shoe (back to footwear references) and make no mistake, the kids know it.

I was once a respected special education leader, tending tirelessly to the needs of both staff and students.  Now, as a supply teacher, I am on constant alert for students who record their names on the paper attendance as “Harry Butz” , “Dick Long” or “Mike Litoris” and ask me to read aloud the list to make sure their name appears.  I have become a human lie detector meant to decide if I believe every girl in the room is truly on their period and must go to the bathroom with at least 3 friends because their cramps are so bad they could pass out and hit their heads and need help; or, that every class has 4 students with low blood sugar who need to go to the cafeteria to vape, I mean eat; or, that going to the bathroom with your jacket, your computer, backpack and cell phone is totally normal and not an indication that you plan to leave for the day.  Which of course the kid does because I have already taken attendance and marked him ‘present’. I will have no way of changing that once I realize he is gonzo because no one in the room will tell me that kids name so I can change the attendance. I am the supply teaching version of Paul Blart, mall cop.

Is this not suffering for my art?

Last week I tried to shoo kids out of a music class as I was trying to prepare for the next group to come in.  In the chaos of kids packing up and rushing off, I cornered a couple of kids with my weird but authoritative glare and square shoulders.

Me: “Come on guys, move it along.  Another class is coming in.” Blank stares back at me with a 3 second awkward silence.

Them: “We are here for the next class Miss”.

Me: “Oh.”

I didn’t know one group from the next.  Endless faces melt together for me now. I am unable to emotionally engage. I am catching a supply teacher’s disease - acute scattered-disconnectedness accompanied by night terrors consisting of me in a plaid, calf-length skirt with a baggy, mud-brown sweater and tear-stained cheeks, wandering a darkened school hallway lined with battered lockers screaming through sobs “Where’s the staff room?” and, “But my key doesn’t open that door!”.

“Perhaps I know best why it is man who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

I hear you Nietzsche. I’m trying to laugh.

The week before that I was in a drama class, last period.  The bell had rung and kids scrambled to leave the room. With the mad rush at the door, it caught and slammed behind them.  I was the last one inside, casually packing up my computer after a rather productive writing session for myself. We’ll call this karma.  Exiting the class, I found the door to be quite heavy and I had to really lean in and push with two hands, like a football player doing a sled push down the field.  It dragged and lagged. I pushed and huffed. When I finally got it open enough to shimmy out, yanking my computer bag through last and spilling some of my lunch bag contents, I looked down to see that the kids had put a wedge on the OUTSIDE of the door in an attempt to lock me in the room!

Gasping in horror at what my life had become, I …..I …..I….laughed out loud and snorted under my breath “you little shits”.  The boys that did it were standing down the hallway snickering and glancing sideways.

I locked the door and returned my keys to the office.  I will return again to be an unknown supply teacher as I have work to do, my writing, for me.  But I am fueled and ready for war. I’ll show you little turd nuggets. I’m gonna make sure in two years time you are all reading a book I wrote, as part of your curriculum, and it will be loooooooonnnnngggg, and all about relationships, love, listening, and cursive writing in the 17th century.

I win.  

By Carol Sloan

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