Because I can't not be...

Lately, the conversation going on around me (online) has centered, to a large degree, on an article about the writer's life, and particularly, how writers treat, or lie about, the sources of income that allow them to write.  While this doesn't directly apply to me, it has spawned some conversation that does apply to me, and also some thought.

I am not a writer.  I mean, I am a writer.  I call myself "a compulsive writer in search of a subject," and that works for me rather nicely.  Sometimes, I have to write.  I am also a compulsive blog-creator, though I have two right now that are actually active.  I am also trying to put together a story (I guess you would call it a novel, but for now it's just a story), which means that I do sneak 10-minute intervals at lunch and sometimes at work.  But I have never deluded myself that I could make money by writing, even though I was an English major and seriously considered the creative writing "track" (which would have required a class on the history of the English language, and I wasn't up for that at the time).  Even now, the idea of writing fiction for profit seems laughable to me, although I know people who are doing it, trying to do it, or claiming to do it, as the case may be.  Each and every one of them does, in fact, have another source of income though, so the claims are dubious.

It might be because I grew up in New Orleans that I was never deluded about "making a living" as a writer.  I'm not sure that my crowd ever aspired to the kind of lifestyle that everyone seems to want these days--at least in Texas.  A modest house and the ability to eat and pay the bills while not working so hard you were miserable seemed to be what most of us wanted--except, of course, that we were also creative types who could not imagine living without writing or acting.  My English teachers never made it sound like writing for a living was a thing--creative writing or otherwise.  All of the writers I knew were teachers.  I never felt deluded for a moment, even when our junior English class attended the gala for the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society as a reward for stuffing envelopes.  The writer's lifestyle was normal living and this, too.  But we were certainly encouraged to try.  And I have, though not with as much dedication as when I was an undergrad getting rejection slips from The Southern Review.  

So in New Orleans, which has a literary culture, I was never told that writing would or could or should be my life.  Frankly, I thought getting advanced degrees and teaching college was a much more practical plan that would still make time for include necessitate writing.  It might be that I was a poet--no one makes money from poetry.  Poets write poetry because poets have to write poetry.  I thought that was simply how it worked.  I am a writer because writers have to write and I have to write.  (No, that's not exactly a run-on.)  And, in a similar vein, I got a Ph.D. becuase I had to get a Ph.D.  Not because I was particularly... whatever people think.  It was simply something I had to do because I couldn't not do it.  (Not doing it would mean getting a real job, and I'm still not ready for that!)  I guess I feel sorry for starry-eyed people who think they can make a living writing novels (some do, but I would bet even fewer than those who land tenure track positions).  Except I don't really feel sorry for them because hello? Reality.  It's all around us.  People.  Working.  Again, I call myself a "cynical idealist."  This might be why.

So working to write.  I get that.  Having someone else working so that you can write.  I guess I get that, but to a lesser degree.  That kind of lifestyle requires more privilege than I have ever had, if only so that the bills that you have in order to have home and food and transportation are not greater than the one income, or to avoid massive student loan debt because there was help from other places.  It's not something I envy, it's simply something I didn't have.  And yes, I made the choice to have more student debt.  I don't really regret that either.

What I find strange and unsettling is that having a Ph.D., aspiring to make a living as an academic, whether or not one lands a tenure track job, is regarded as just as ridiculous as aspiring to make a living as a writer, if not more so since there's a glamour about writing, and academics are subject to more negative stereotypes in many corners.

What I also find strange and unsettling is that I'm a teacher--and I'm a teacher because I can't not teach.  Like being a writer.  Like when I thought I would be a poet.  And so I adjunct.  Which means that I have to have a day job.  Some adjuncts teach many classes at ALL of the colleges so that they can scrape together a living while retaining the purity of their pursuit.  These are the ones starving in the hedgerows and complaining about it.  I'm a scab.  A strikebreaker.  The one who goes to work while others are picketing outside.  Because I don't really need the pay, I rather feel as though I'm supporting a corrupt system that exploits the abundant overeducated labor force.  Writers don't really have to face that.  Writing is a glamorous, solitary occupation with a "high and lonely destiny." Teaching requires an infrastructure.  And I'm also an online teacher. For an online only branch campus that wants its online academic instructors to be adjunct only.  That's a whole different level of scabbiness.  But heck.  The adjunct-only adjuncts probably do more to support a system that keeps me (and themselves) out of teaching full time, simply because they're there to exploit, whereas I said no.  I would not be exploited.

So what I keep coming back to is this:  I am working full-time, not to support my writing habit, but to support my teaching habit.  My unglamorous, slightly suspect, scabby little teaching habit.  Because I'm a teacher, and teachers are compelled to teach.

Food for thought.