Writing for No Reward

Summer is finally here and we've finally got a decent burst of rain, so everything is greening up. 

School has been finished for a week and it's such a relief. With a summer school course I'm teaching at the end of the month and two qualification programmes I'm starting I still feel like I have so much to do, but without structure of having to get up super early and work for someone else. I set my own schedule, work at my own pace and in my own home, even in my jammies if I feel like it. Every day slows down and stretches out, but still slips by too fast. 

One week down, I try not to think about it, but it ticks deceptively quiet in my head, just below the surface of thought. What can I complete in a week? My washing machine was finally fixed after several weeks of being broken, so I've accomplished a mountain of laundry and I'm still at it. Bedding today.

I've mowed the grass, filled the veg boxes at the plot and planted out some strawberries, corn and courgettes. I've written my course contact day reflection, read the study circle article and written some notes, started writing my school backgrounds for my programmes. I've updated my course material for the summer school, had the pre-meeting with the students. I've washed a big rug which took too many tools and too much time. Two to go. Life in the fast lane.

I've written poetry; scribbled notes, half lines. I always think I need more time to write and when I have it, it suddenly seems hard to focus. But this week I sketched a poem about students finding my poetry on the internet. They've googled me which seems a waste, but  there's definitely worse things out there. The fact that they chanted lines of my poetry back at me on the last day of school as some kind of taunt just tickled me. I had to write about it. They read poetry willingly, even memorised it. That has to be something to be proud of. 

There is so little to talk about with my writing just now. My desire to write doesn't match my motivation. I've only submitted 9 times this year, halfway through the year. That is a big turnaround from when I used to try and make at least 100 submissions in a year, so I could get 100 rejections and hopefully a decent amount of acceptances. See previous post here. It worked, but required a lot of effort and time. 

Now I just fill pages, in my notebook, electronically. It's where I get the most enjoyment, but I can't help feeling I should keep trying to get published more in journals and work to get a collection out. It was my goal for decades, but now I have so much else going on and I just don't find it rewarding. I don't write to be published, don't need to be read, so why do I keep trying? 

Habit, I guess, or the vague hope that it will happen. To be honest, I barely believe that any more. I know I can get into journals, but my collections are going nowhere. Waiting for years while the publisher who accepted my collection published all his regulars and dozens of other people and just made excuses to keep me on the bottom his to-be-published list killed my hope. And the 37 rejections for my collections I've racked up in the past 5 years.

My desire to try and get published may be almost gone, but not my love of writing. So in between lesson planning, coursework, piles of laundry, mowing, feeding and negotiating with my kids, I try to write poetry. I play with words and images, I attempt to capture my moments in this world on the page. 

And I don't press publish on this blog to reach the masses or even a trickle of readers, but for myself. To see the entries sketch my thoughts across the years, to document my highs and lows, my random thoughts, my cycling through the seasons. 

I write to find my way through.

I guess that is enough for now.