Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 9 FEBRUARY 2011

A state of emergency has ruled my life for the past five years. This existential condition dictates that I should … that I need … that I am absolutely obliged to first make money before I can afford to spend any serious time on my writing again. This implies that writing is a luxury I cannot afford in a time of emergency.

Well, I think it has become painfully clear that the state of emergency is not working. So, I am going to let it go. (Or do I need the state of emergency to get myself to do something that may eventually make money? I think: No.)

What does it mean in practical terms? It means for my first shift of the day, from after breakfast to dinnertime, I am going to work on writing projects. Second shift, after dinner to bedtime: business, including English classes.

I have a good idea what I should do with my business projects. But if these projects require so much work that I don’t have time for anything else, it will mean I am biting off too much. In such a case I will simply have to pay other people to do some of the work. If I can’t afford to do that, I’ll have to let it go.

Fact is, without my writing, I am just a guy trying his best to make money. Sometimes this guy fails, and sometimes he succeeds. And the rest of the time he reads his history books and he watches TV. Is this me? Maybe in five years’ time, in all honesty, or ten. But I will be doomed, if not damned as well, if I allow my writing to go to waste.

“But you do work on your writing – kind of,” my imaginary interlocutor of many years might say.

Not really, I’ll answer. The bits of work that I do now and then can be compared to the dry crusts and bones someone feeds to a dog under the table. It’s not enough. It’s not enough to keep a dog that is supposed to be on guard alive.

I don’t choose my writing above attempts to make money, or as I like to call it, “business”. I choose both. I know what I have to do. I am doing it. I don’t have to worry about it all the time. And I certainly don’t have to believe that I have to impress some money god with how hard I try.

I repeat: I know what I should do; I am already doing it; and I will continue to work on it six days a week. But the time has come to give more attention to something that goes beyond just money.

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MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 2011

This evening I saw the news that Gary Moore had passed away yesterday.

This afternoon, while watching the video of “End of the Line” by the Traveling Wilburys, I made two decisions:

1. I need a business partner. Additional capital will be nice, but it is more for the critical voice that will not be impressed by another “fantastic” idea. “Convince me,” I need to hear.

2. I am almost forty. I reckon I have at most five years to do something with the writing I produced in my twenties and thirties. If I do something with it, my vocation as a writer of semi-unique material will continue. If I carry on with my writing in the same vein as the last five years – with every now and then a move in the right direction only to lose momentum … I can forget about it. It will be over and done with.

Gary Moore died yesterday. But as I listen to his masterpiece “The Messiah Will Come Again”, I realise: he made music, and his music is his legacy.

[Eleven days later, on 18 February 2011, one of my favourite Afrikaans singers, Lucas Maree, also died. It confirmed the importance of the thoughts of 7 February 2011: If you have something to say, if you think you have something to contribute, don’t procrastinate.]

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WEDNESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 2011

The average foreign English teacher in Taiwan’s income system has four disadvantages:

1. The work is boring and repetitive.

2. They work for people who sometimes make bad decisions that make their work more difficult, and they can’t do much about it.

3. Their income system is linked to specific places, which means they need to spend anything between thirty minutes and two hours on the road every day, probably on a scooter, and sometimes in hot, humid weather and/or heavy monsoon rains.

4. Their income system is not sustainable – in many cases they cannot still do this work in ten or fifteen years’ time, and there isn’t much opportunity for career growth.

That being said, I sometimes envy foreign teachers with a reasonably full schedule their income system, because of one advantage: they have to follow a set of rules every day of the week, Monday through Friday, and the end result is about NT$3,000 [approximately US$100] per day. Three thousand new Taiwan dollars. Per day. Five days a week.

THURSDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2011

I hope to become less enthusiastic about taking a position on something without considering all the angles, and less eager to inform others without delay why I think someone is wrong, and why I am right.

I hope to become a better listener, because even when someone is wrong about one thing, they can still make valid points about something else. And even if someone is wrong in your opinion, their arguments are still coming from somewhere, and it is always better to understand where a person is coming from than to not understand it.

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