I think I write about spring break every year at this time. I offer up some self-absorbed musing about how burned out I am. About how I’m looking forward to gluttony and sloth.
My biorhythms are attuned to academic calendars and, whether as a high school teacher or a professor, spring break has always been a heavy sigh. A little respite in a sea of too much activity for too little pay. Of course it isn’t about the pay. It can’t be. The pay doesn’t actually pay. It just pretends to pay. Beware the lure of empire.
At least, in some ways, I’m predictable. For the moment. Predictability never lasts long. A great writer once wrote about that.
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What a self-absorbed link that was! Always trying to push my books, I guess. But, all profitability aside, I am proud of that little book. It isn’t about money or fame for this humble, self-absorbed Samuel, it is about making something worth making. Always has been and always will be.
I’ve been stumbling along with some new writing. Writing that feels like a riff on my other writing. Kurt Vonnegut wrote that all of his writing was a response to the writing that came before it. That’s an improvisational way to imagine creating works of art. Neil Young once said, during a concert, that it was all one song. I like that. Everything is connected, even if it is exactly different.
My new writing has been about my father, about my anxiety, and about a witch. Confusing, right? There’s a blur of genre happening in what I’m putting down. I’m at about 70,000 words and I have no idea what the book is about, other than it feels like a sequel to this and to this. And a response to this current moment. And what a moment it is.
I’m not strategic. I don’t spend much time worrying about genre. I do, however, spend lots of time at my computer. Tapping away at keys. Trying to make something that, at least to me, feels like it is worth making.
That’s all any maker of things can do, I suppose. And all of us are makers. Made in our maker’s image.
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I rarely travel during spring break. Or, I should say, we rarely travel during spring break. It is hard to get away from the multiplicity of family. Little trips to St. Louis or Pittsburgh, sure, but I’m taking about real vacations. Get on a plane, sit near a beach vacations. Our bank account is too humble for luxurious excursions. This is especially true right now. In this economy???
I suspect we will spend some lazy time around Iowa City. Maybe go to some restaurants. I’ll probably head to a coffee shop. Spend some time making more of the things that I’m usually making.
It really has been an intense couple of months. I feel some anxiety in my body about work. Thankfully, these days, I understand that anxiety as anxiety. It is what it is. I am okay, I am not okay, and that is okay. That’s a line that I just keep using. I bet I could write one hell of a self-help book if I could ever get my genres straight. Alas, poor Yorick, that is not my fate. I’ll keep making what I’m making until I can’t make anymore. Or, in the words of the venerable Kurt Vonnegut, I’ll keep writing what I must until I bodily-bust.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 