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The comforts of irrelevance

To my mild surprise, I came home one day last week to find one of my sons, who shall remain nameless, reading a copy of one of my chapbooks.

"Hello Dad" he said, in an off-hand manner, before tossing it on the table. "Not really my sort of thing"

I wasn't, I hasten to add, particularly offended by this; his thing is anime, and he's eleven. I don't recall being a particular fan of procedural poetry myself at that age, to be entirely honest with you, I was more a fan of really intently watching the opening titles of Baywatch. Indeed, as with so much of my life, writing poetry was just something I sort of fell into and it turned out I was alright enough at it to publish a bit and read a bit and...well, not much else really. And that's fine, I never had dreams of fame or success from writing, it was always just something I did. 

To quote Homer Simpson: aim low kids, aim so low that nobody will realise if you fail.

This isn't to say that I didn't take it seriously, but certainly not as seriously as most others. I never had time to go to all the readings, talk to the other poets, build up the network of connections that helps a writer get by. I was generally working. I do occasionally wonder what would have happened if I'd gone down the starving artist route and remained driven and pure, working only to live so that I could create.

And the prosaic answer is, I probably wouldn't be quite as secure as I am, and I definitely wouldn't be happily married with three kids. I was at Manchester Psych fest the other week, having a day of catching up with old friends, watching a few bands, rolling back the years a little, and in conversation with someone I remarked that yeah, I was the one that sold out. It was a joke, but there's a little something in it. I never dedicated my life to my work, mainly because I always strongly suspected (correctly) that I wasn't really good enough. I had a little ability, a few good ideas, and I took them pretty much as far as I could.

Which, I reflected, as my son casually tossed something that took eight years to write onto the kitchen table, would do, to be honest. There's precious little money in writing, and the second I left university the question was, how are you going to pay these student loans back? Which soon became, how are you going to buy that house? Which then became, how are you going to fund that business? Which then became, okay, there's not much in this, how are you going to keep that marriage together?

I am in awe of my friends who've managed to make a life in writing (and I do have a few), but realistically that was never going to happen to me. I'm too bloody utilitarian for my own good. One day maybe the day will come where I feel comfortably enough off to take a step back and pay somebody else to do what I do, and sit back down to write, but that day isn't arriving soon, and in the meantime, only ever having been small-time is something of a comfort. Like the Sunday League footballer who reckons he could have made it if life hadn't gotten in the way, there's always that little lurking sense of pride, that little something to cling on to. The possibility, unexposed to the harsh realities of doing the thing and failing. The comfort of irrelevance.


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