Tox Report 79. Work and non-work
Against the infinite hustle
Welcome back to Tox Report! It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I’ve done a lot since I last wrote to you, but the most important thing I’ve done was… a week of nothing. Well, not literally nothing — during my holiday in Cornwall, I read five novels I actually liked plus Julia Jones’s delightful book about women sailors, climbed three tors in the fog, and spent hours in the Atlantic — but nothing in the sense of no work.
Historically, I’ve been very bad at taking holidays. A combination of genuinely loving my work, professional insecurity and a deep desire to please means that I can’t remember my last holiday unpunctuated by a deadline.
I’ve even taken a masochistic pride in this: the reviews clattered out over hotel WiFi on an afternoon stolen from my family, the column turned in from the flight back from New York. And then there’s my habitual claim that reading “doesn’t count” as work, because I read all the time anyway, so why wouldn’t I be reading something I that gives me literally no pleasure whatsoever, like Travis Alabanza’s memoir?
Since I started in journalism almost two decades ago, I’ve often had the sensation of running across a burning bridge, trying to outpace the flames. Stop to catch my breath, and I’d feel my heels start to singe.
In my very early days, I remember taking a call from an editor of Comment is Free (RIP), and explaining that my reception was bad because I was in a beach hut on Scarborough North Bay; she apologetically withdrew her request, and I spent the rest of the week in agonies in case she never called again. I can’t recall what she was asking me to write, but I know I wanted to write it more than anything.
Does it sound mad of me to believe one stupid blog post (fee: £87)1 was the difference between a career and no career? Maybe it was. But all I had to offer, at the time, were stupid blog posts and my willingness to write them during time that anyone else would treat as leisure — evenings, weekends, lunchbreaks, holidays. Writing was the only thing I wanted to do, and the only route into it for me as someone who lived outside London and had small children was the attritional one.
I think that today I have successfully worn the world of journalism down; but I wore myself down too. And though I don’t think it’s possible to have this job and not be hustling to some degree (no income stream should be treated as guaranteed), I’m ready to hustle a bit less. I can’t say for sure how I’m seen by editors and readers, but at 43, I’m fairly confident that there’s more to recommend me than a pathological reluctance to say no, especially when it comes to the kind of busywork that Helen Lewis describes in her painfully accurate anatomy of the book marketing circuit.
Over time, I’ve got better at turning down the work I don’t think is right for me, whether that’s because I don’t like the subject or I don’t like the rate. But I’ve belatedly realised that there’s also work I need to turn down because there are times when I simply shouldn’t be working. I’m not saying I’ll ever reach the enlightened state where I’m not checking my email on holiday (come on), but from now on, if you get my OOO, you’ll know that I mean it.
Gimme, gimme more…
I’ve thought a lot about this NYT (paywall) article on how to pack, and though I have notes, it is basically quite useful if you, like me, tend to arrive at your destination with more dresses than you have days to spend there.
Among the novels I read on holiday: Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls trilogy, which I can’t believe I haven’t read before, and which feels as fresh as if it was written last week in its understanding of hope, naivety and the secret life of girls, against the backdrop of the 1960s.
For hard-to-explain reasons, I also watched 1965 sex farce The Knack… And How to Get It, which was both an enlightening companion piece to the O’Brien and an accidental anatomy of why the sexual revolution was a con for women. The final act is one of the most unpleasant things I have ever seen on screen, but the bed sequence is a Tati-esque delight. I bought a copy of the play the film is based purely out of morbid curiosity.
I’m not going to try to catch you up on everything I’ve written since February, but if you catch up on one thing, please make it this essay on the breaking of Lena Dunham (UnHerd). I’ve been watching Girls, to cleanse my palate after the grisliness of Too Much, and I seriously cannot believe 1. how great that show is and 2. how much Dunham was punished for being good.
I also went in on why the left should be glad, actually, about the demise of The Late Show (The Times, paywall/registration required); and for Air Mail, I wrote about the rise and rise of dating shows.
“If it is sometimes confusing to work out how Britain makes a living, Ms Blue and her ilk provide an answer. In one gimmick, Ms Blue turned up at Nottingham Trent University offering to bed any student. The gambit was sponsored by Stake.com, an Australian gambling company, whose logo also adorns the shirt of Everton Football Club. An OnlyFans star, a low-tariff university reliant on foreign students, and a gambling company? Behold Britain’s thriving services sector.” Very funny, very depressing Economist article on “Bonnie Blue’s Britain” (paywall).
The subtitle of this newsletter is a steal from the great, great compilation album by Broadcast, which includes what is probably my unofficial theme tune:
I’d retconned this to a less insulting figure of £150 and was quite horrified when I checked my old invoices and saw the actual figure.
Great to see Tox Report back! I’ve missed it.
Great to have you back. I have missed you!