So, I’m in Dublin.  It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything on this blog (let’s be honest: it’s been awhile since I’ve written anything, period).  I did write a post a few nights ago.  It was all about how I walked by a big semi-detached house on the Iffley Road on my way to the pub and heard a weird screaming noise that could have either been someone in pain, or someone having sex, or else a fox experiencing some kind of excitement.  The post was witty, it was hilarious, it was beautiful and brilliant.  And it got mysteriously deleted.  So I’d like to say that I’m suffering some sort of Wordpress-induced post-traumatic stress syndrome; but mostly, I’m just lazy, and a little busy.

And now I’m in Dublin.  We’re staying in an almost-swanky 70s concrete-block hotel.  It’s huge; I mean, it takes us ten minutes just to get to the elevators from our room.  We got a good deal on the place, and I’m not going to lie: I like it better than the funky hostel alternative.  It makes me feel more adult.  We get free shampoo!  The duvet is fluffy and white! There’s internet access and instant coffee!  The lobby has one of those über-shiny faux-marble floors!  Mostly it means that I can fart in bed and walk around naked without worrying what other people might think of me.

It’s weird, being here.  I keep having to remind myself that I’m in another country, that I travelled to get here.  There’s no jet-lag or language barrier, no fog of exhaustion; no sense, really, that I’ve left one place and arrived in another.  It’s almost like being in an alternate-universe version of Britain (apologies to the Man for stealing his analogy)–the same markers (chain restaurants, high street shops, uniformed schoolkids, semi-chic businesspeople) but everything slightly, gently, almost imperceptibly different.

The pubs.  The pubs are beautiful; they’re warm and packed and full of life and beautiful, bright-eyed Irish girls, old men with red cheeks.  They’re also almost horrifically expensive, which proves, I suppose, the determination of the drinking culture here–in a country less devoted to its cups, the 5 euro pints would surely drive drinkers either underground or to other pursuits.

It’s nice to be in a city, a real city.  In Oxford we’re spoiled by beauty, and in London overwhelmed by the sheer scale of things.  But here I’m reminded of Boston, which is manageable but bustling, charming but grimy.  Walking through St. Stephen’s Green I feel I could easily be in the public gardens next to the Boston Common.

In other news, it’s mostly been cloudy, or almost-cloudy, a few rare shafts of sunlight turning the trees to gold.  I’m glad.  In my mind Dublin is a cloudy city; always a little cold, a little grey, so that the warmth of a pub is necessary after a long day’s wandering.  If a thin mist wants to fall, all the better.  As I’m writing this, of course, the sun has come out, cast a glorious light over the dark brown stones, and I’m tempted to revise my opinion: it’s a city made to be seen in yellow evening light.  But I won’t, because then I think of Joyce’s Dubliners, “The Dead”, the winter chill, the darkness after the party, the drizzle and snow.

Anyway, more later.  If I spend the entire trip holed up in internet cafés I won’t get to see the city.

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I didn’t win a free trip to Sydney. I’ll write more about that soon, but for now the details are unimportant.  What’s important is this: on Thursday, after the news was announced, we decided to un-celebrate with a pint in the Rusty Bicycle.  Some people might call it “drowning your sorrows”, but I was in a celebratory mood.  After all, it had been several months of hard work and anticipation, and good things (including a hamper full of Australian junk food) had come of it.  Moreover, it’s Autumn, and there’s nothing nicer on a chilly October evening than to have a glass of cider by the radiator in your local.  There’s something about the slow and inevitable descent of these months into darkness and ice that makes me want to play with time–I feel constantly as if I both want things to speed up and slow down, as if I need more hours in the day and to rush through the damp mood that comes over me when the leaves start to fall.  The only appropriate place to think thoughts like that is at the pub.

When the pub closed we walked the 20 yards home and invited a friend in for a pre-bed cup of tea.  But by the time we’d got to the kitchen we’d all decided we didn’t want tea.  The only other option was the bottle of elderflower champagne I’d bought in Devon to celebrate the successful completion of my MA.  The problem with buying a bottle of booze for a specific reason, of course, is that you then let it sit around, certain that no moment is special enough to warrant opening it.  And here we were, a month later, the unopened bottle on the rack reminding me of the uncelebrated occasion; here we were without a free trip to Sydney, with time doing dances around us and the trees in the garden getting naked.

So we opened it, for no good reason.  Which in a way is the perfect way to celebrate.  On cold Thursday night, after midnight, with your alarm already set for work and no particular worries or ambitions weighing you down.  In coats and hats we sat outside and drained our glasses, and of course the elderflower champagne didn’t taste as delicious as it was supposed to, but made us deliciously light-headed anyway.  Then we ate the rest of the sausages I’d made for dinner, and spread cheese on stale Ryvita, and plotted and planned.

Could I have arranged a better way to mark the completion of a degree than this?  Elderflower champagne, autumnal chills, conversation, creative energy, and the birth of a potentially very exciting idea.  How’s that for an un-celebration?

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Over at the Send Me To Sydney blog, things are winding down after an amazing and exhausting few months.  The time has nearly come: tomorrow, the winner of the Awesome Tour of Sydney will be unveiled (I’m nervous just thinking about it!).  It’s been a hell of a trip; I urge you all to check out my final post, a literary guide to the city, which in many ways was my favourite challenge response.  I also encourage you to check out the competition, who are listed on the sidebar of the Sydney blog–some great creative thinking has come out of this project, and it’s worth looking at how eight bloggers managed to approach each new task differently.

Finally, thank you all for reading, for contributing with comments, ideas, drawings, laughs, and support.  Thanks to the fantastic guys at 1000heads and Tourism New South Wales for coming up with this crazy idea, and then inviting me to be a part of it.  And here’s hoping (please please please please!) that I’ll find myself wandering through Sydney in the not-too-distant future.

The blog’s not going anywhere, so visit www.sendmetosydney.com to catch up on all the old challenges, read the latest entry, post your own thoughts, and, of course, to learn the results…

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Where’s the line between supporting yourself and driving yourself crazy?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

Supporting yourself: I mean, doing the minimum to pay your bills, your rent, your pub landlords.  I do not mean doing the minimum to simply survive.  I consider supporting yourself to be survival + luxury, of a sort.  The luxury of a pint or two; the luxury of buying a new pair of boots when your old ones disintegrate (I know a lot about this; I’m dealing with the loss of my favourite old pair); the luxury of not waking up in the middle of the night every month coated in sweat wondering if your rent cheque is going to bounce, again.  That kind of luxury–not the business-class, designer shoes, king-sized bed kind.

Supporting yourself to this degree shouldn’t be–and generally isn’t–difficult, provided you’re content with your work; or at least, not actively aspiring to do something else.  If you are actively aspiring to do something else, things become complicated.  It suddenly becomes tempting to think that if you cut a few hours at the office here and there, you’d have so much more time for your art (or whatever it is that wants your time more than endless phone calls to the IT guy and empty lunchtime chitchat).  And of course, you could cut a few hours.  You could tighten your belt.  You could avoid the pub at all costs, wear jumpers with holes (which are sure to come into fashion at some point, anyhow), eat like the mythical starving college student, swear off travel, bookshops, wine–whatever it is that you sink your money into.  With all that inherited time, you could make something great.

It doesn’t work, of course.  I know it doesn’t work, and there are plenty of people ready to remind me when I can’t remind myself (try him if you need it spelled out in plain and ever-so-slightly annoying English).  I know it doesn’t work from experience.  I’ve had several spells of voluntary unemployment, and here’s what I did: I bought things.  I burned through several thousand dollars worth of savings.  Then I avoided going hungry by cutting out every pleasure I could think of.  I worried.  I sweated.  I cried.  I lived off credit cards and desperation.  I picked fights with everyone, especially the poor sod who has to live with me and who doesn’t, as a freelancer, make enough money to keep both himself and his book-buying girlfriend afloat.  I’ll tell you what I didn’t do, in any of those intervals: write anything that made it all worth it. It turns out you can’t just cut things from your life and carry on as you were before.  (And I obviously can’t cut the pub: it’s where some of the most inspiring and exciting collaborative things often happen).

I’m certainly not sitting on three-quarters of a novel because of the times I didn’t work.  I’ve got my 60,000 words because I did something stupid a few months ago and took on two jobs (one of which I genuinely love) and a full-time Masters, and then when I got home, or to the pub, I sat and wrote.  Was it some form of inertia?  The effect of the MA?  Or was I simply motivated by how much I did not want to have to make photocopies for a living anymore?  Impossible to tell; but I can say with some confidence that being able to buy the occasional dress on eBay and order takeout Chinese helped.  Perhaps after all, it’s simply about focusing your energy, using it not for fretting but for creation.

I know all that.  But still.  It’s tempting.  What I wonder is, where is the point at which temptation becomes distraction?  At the moment I can just about bear my photocopying job with a pained grin, but on bad days I sit at my desk fantasizing about artfully worded letters of resignation.  The thing that always stops me is that simple little thought: support yourself.

So.  Here’s what I want to know.  (It’s okay if there isn’t an answer.  In fact, I doubt there is.  But I want it to be talked about anyway, because I think it’s important, and because I’m selfish enough to hope that with enough talk I might be able to find an answer for myself.)  Is there a way to support yourself, as an artist/writer/musician/dancer/thinker/collaborator/whatever, that balances survival with intellectual stimulation?  Or is that friction between want and need part of some necessary process in the early days of a creative career?

Let me know.  Or don’t.  But do think of me if you’re ever in need of a writer/researcher with a background in politics and literature who hates photocopying and big, boring, black PCs.

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