Well, I’ve had an email from the guy in Berlin welcoming me to the project and saying he’s glad I’m going to be involved, which is nice of him.
But it’s obvious that there won’t be any work coming from Oxford, because there’s no money to pay me, even for what I’ve already done. Having tortured myself over whether I should give up the PC to give me more time to do the editing work, it looks as though that isn’t an option anyway. So, I’m stuck with what I’m doing, I have to just grit my teeth and get on with it.
The trouble is that all the organisations I do work for are non-profit making and largely run by voluntary effort, which makes me feel awkward about asking for money. The MOMD has loads of editing work that needs doing, but... Should I offer to do it anyway without expecting payment? After all, I was talking to the Head of Publications, and she said in a semi-accusatory tone, ‘Even I don’t get paid’. So why should I expect to? But all the other people involved are academics who are making a living in some other way, and can afford to do this for love. I feel grubby and mercenary, and yet I must be earning a hell of a lot less than any of them – not enough to be able to support myself.
The answer is, it seems, that there is no escape route, I just have to make the most of things as they are. I have two lines of a song running through my head: ‘Life would be easy, if it wasn’t so hard’, only I can’t for the life of me remember where it’s from or who sings it.
I think everything would fall into place if I was happy with my marriage, if I loved my Hubby it wouldn’t matter so much about being dependent on him, I could just get on and do whatever I want to do, maybe even just write, finish my novel, do my research, and not be fretting about how I can earn money.
So maybe I should try and stop myself thinking about wanting love, or sex, or romance, or whatever the hell it is that I’m hankering after, and be grateful for a nice place to live and not having to worry about paying the bills. Everybody has to make compromises, don’t they? Why should I think I can be any different?
It’s just that I have this feeling that things could be different and I could actually be happy with my life, not just enjoy some bits of it some of the time. But maybe that is all anybody can ever hope for. Shit, I don’t know. Why do I keep coming back to the same bloody question: do you change the circumstances of your life to find happiness, or do you accept things as they are? And if the latter (which I suspect is true), why is it so bloody difficult? Or is that just me?
I’ve remembered that song: ‘Dirty Town’ from the film Still Crazy, sung by Bill Nighy.