Spiflicating

So, second day back at work yesterday, 43 degrees outside, and the airconditioners packed up. We were trying to concentrate on what we had to do: meetings, interviewing prospective students, admin duties, the usual stuff, while the temperature began the climb through the thirties. Most unpleasant.

In my mother's words: we were spiflicating. This is a word she always uses for when she's absolutely boiling. I always thought she'd made it up because it seemed an unusual word, and I'd never heard anyone else use it. But it was common lingo in our home.

So, I was surprised one day to come across it in the Macquarie -- only it doesn't mean "boiling hot", does it? It (spiflicate) means: "to destroy utterly; hurt, punish, or damage; destroy or kill". Hmmm. Maybe I'd misunderstood her meaning. Maybe she'd meant the heat was damaging us. That we were hurting.

So I rang her up.

"What does 'spiflicating' mean?" I said, as innocently as I could.

"Really hot," she said, "boiling. You know, when you think you're going to expire from heat."

Well, perhaps she didn't say "expire". That's more my type of word, but you get the drift. And that's how I felt yesterday. I was hurting. I felt close to expiring. (Yeah, yeah, I'm being dramatic, but it was a dramatic kind of day. And is again today.)

I know now that I shouldn't use "spiflicating" in this way, but I kind of like it. I'm tempted to put it into one of my character's mouths. "I'm spiflicating," one might say out in the desert. I'm tempted to try to spread the word and hope that like other words and phrases (it's all good, for example) it catches on. I mean it's all very well to argue that I've got the meaning wrong and shouldn't be using it incorrectly (yes, the editor in me shudders at the thought), but I'm too attached to the word -- and who ever uses it in it's real sense anyway? It's a spiffy word that should be out there more.

Anyway, language grows through misusage, even if some of that growth annoys the hell out of me. After learning that "alright" should really be "all right" -- my Webster's labels "alright" as "substandard usage", and several of my other dictionaries don't list it at all. One of my style guides says we should preserve "all right" as the correct spelling and never, ever use "alright"; another says that we should get with the times and not be so stuffy. I always use "all right". Even worse, for me, is the use of "disinterested" (meaning "unbiased") for "uninterested", but this meaning is becoming more acceptable and is listed in the latest Macquarie as being acceptable. Yuck. No, no, no. But "spiflicating" -- now, there's a word. Merriam Webster require three citations from diverse sources before they'll consider adding a new word (or neologism, another cool word) to the dictionary. How many do the Macquarie people need, I wonder. So here it is: spiflicating, spiflicating, spiflicating. Go out and use it. (If Ellen can have her interrobang, then I can have spiflicating = bloody hot, boiling.

Which brings me back to how I felt yesterday. You know, I actually didn't mind it too much till I went downstairs and realised how much cooler it was. Enrolments were happening there, and the cynic in me wondered whether that part of the aircon that had broken down serviced our part of the building, or whether someone somewhere decided to divert what aircon there was to where the enrolments were happening. It would make sense because there were a lot of people there. I'm a cynic because this used to happen when I was a scientist. When the temp got into the high 30s, the good people who maintained the aircon would turn our aircon off and divert all power to the operating theatre. Now, I can understand that the surgeons need to be cool, but we were up there spiflicating in our lab coats (me crouched over my Bunsen burner). And the biochemists -- half their tests wouldn't work, and then we'd get irate phone calls from doctors demanding results right away, and not wanting to listen to us say that we couldn't do it, not until things cooled down or we got our aircon back. Of course they never offered to give us a greater share of the aircon they were enjoying...

Living a writing life

This year, I increased my time-fraction at work from 0.4 to 0.6 (two days a week to three). Now, the number of days a week I work is a bit laughable really -- it's teaching, and that means lots of marking and in our cases workshopping at home.  Some people are able to do some of their prep/marking at work, but we have to do admin work like answering phones and student enquiries and various other things, so we almost never get this luxury.

As well, I've taught a new subject, which is always a heap more work -- lots of extra unpaid work for sure, but work that is rewarding, nonetheless, as we research our subjects, looking for great writing exercises, better understanding, in-depth explanations or whatever. So, while it's a bind, it's also very rewarding.

Also, in second semester I've taught an online subject, which means my time-fraction has effectively been 0.8. I feel like my whole life has become teaching.

On the one hand it's been great. The Gadget Man was out of work for much of last year, and we ate up all our savings and then some, so it's been nice to have a bit more income and try to catch up on debts and stuff. The worst part about it has been the effect on my writing, which has really fallen away, especially as the semester progressed. 

There is one thing writers do, and that's write. Well, there are a lot of other things too, but writing is the main one. And there is no better time than the present -- we will, none of us, ever have more time than right now. It is a truth among writers, universally acknowledged. (See, all that Austen is rubbing off!) 

And yet . . . 

And yet sometimes the things we do, the choices we make, affect more than just the amount of time we have for writing. The amount of headspace is also affected.

Teaching is not the ideal job for writers. A lot of our creative energy goes into our students, into their work. We're left scrabbling with what's left over. (Neither, as my friend E will attest, is writing (nonfic) the best job for fiction writers. Again, all that creative energy is poured out into the daily grind. Not the most conducive for going home after work and settling again in front of a computer.)

The year before I started teaching, I was writing about 30,000 words/month. My best month was about 50,000. In one of my early years in teaching, I wrote a short story in January and another in December and nothing in between. Signing a writing contract with my students has helped keep me more honest than that, but this year has been particularly hard. And has left me with a decision. Do I keep with the higher time-fraction or drop back?

There are no correct answers to this question. Commitment is something I often talk about with my students. How much you commit is all a matter of what's right for you. The best writers are often selfish with their time -- and perhaps you don't want to be. 

It's the same in any field of art -- I remember watching an interview with Bill Cosby and his talking about his selfishness in his early years of acting and how he regretted the time he lost with his family, but his acknowledgment that he wouldn't have been where he was without that.

No-one has the right to decide our priorities for us. It's something each of us must do for ourselves -- weighing up what we want out of life and how much we're prepared to pay for it, in terms of what it will cost not just in terms of dedication and hard work, but also in sacrifices.

After long discussions with my family, I've decided to cut back on my hours. The person I am when I'm not writing is an angry, frustrated person: one I don't like very much. I'd much rather be less well off financially and more whole spiritually, because that's what writing does for me.