I sat down to write this week’s ‘issue’ and as I did my phone rang. My sister. The call couldn’t have come at a better time because, frankly, I really didn’t know what I was going to talk about this week. Sure - I’ve got the standards you’ve come to expect. The new comic:

And the playlists. Not only the one I’ve listened to this week:

But the updated version of the ‘best of’ my own music including my new EP now that it’s out EVERYWHERE digitally from today (the first thirteen songs are my current ‘set list’ when playing randomly to myself at home. I really should get out there again and actually gig one day!):

Speaking of the new EP - a reminder you can still download it for free (pay what you like) over at Bandcamp:

Anyway - my sister called just as I was thinking maybe Sabbatical had come to the end of the line? A lot has happened this week, but how much was really worth reporting?

Monday was interesting, as I returned to the same school I did a session on anarchism on last Friday to do the same sort of thing with a different group. Friday’s group were aggressively anti-anarchist in their questions. Not in any bad way. They asked great questions. But it felt like instinctively they were unconvinced and little I said was going to change their minds. Monday’s group were equally critical, but felt far more open to the possibilities of the idea. In each case I was quite surprised how resistant they were though. I remembered being their age myself and first discovering these ideas and feeling my horizons broaden and the possibilities of existence expand. My mind was blown and my entire perspective of the world changed. These guys seemed happier to cling to the certainties of the current broken and imperfect system for comfort. It felt odd to be the wide-eyed and idealistic old man trying to convince jaded children that a better world was possible.

Still, I think both sessions were successful. I’ve been invited back to do a third before the end of the year, and possibly also give a talk on prison abolition. And each session was really fun to do and got both me and the students thinking, which is the entire point.

As well as bringing anarchism to the youth, I’ve started hunting for an agent for my finished memoir. Who knows how successful I’ll be? It’s a good story though, and hopefully one someone thinks its worth other people reading. It would also be useful to have an agent on board for THE BIG RESEARCH AND WRITING PROJECT too, once that is finished and seeking a publisher. The process is nerve-wracking and time-consuming, like applying for any job, and I can’t help but flash back to decades ago, seeking unsuccessfully a fiction agent for my attempts at horror novels. Back then it was all stamped addressed envelopes and waiting weeks to see a letter addressed in your own handwriting come through the door to kick you in the teeth and say ‘no’. At least now it’s all email and seems a lot faster. Still, having had one book published fairy-tale style, with a publisher literally getting in touch out of the blue and asking to do a book with me, I have also much experience with rejection for my writing. It will always be triggering seeing if anyone sees value in something you have created that you feel is so important.

Besides another meeting of the Association of Philosophy Teachers on Tuesday night, and a lively conversation about diversifying the A-level specification and its male-dominated and almost completely white reading list (as well as finalising details on our first conference), the rest of the week was mainly taken up focused on THE BIG RESEARCH AND WRITING PROJECT (in between pointless bouts of push-ups. Insane to think that, as I write this on Thursday November 10th I have done 1000 push ups this month!) The project is currently standing at about 26,000 decent words and has a really good shape forming, but these next few weeks will be a bit of a slog as they involve going through most of the standard literature on theories of punishment and being able to explain and back up all that in order to make a critique of it. A lot of complicated and infuriating reading that usually translates into a few sentences or a paragraph and feels distinctly not worth all the time and energy in terms of eventual output but which is utterly necessary. It’s going well and I’m really happy with what I’m saying, but it’s the most ‘work’ the whole indulgence has felt like so far.

Oh - and I also spent Monday detaching myself from all the notifications of social media and email, finally learning to live a life where my watch or phone doesn’t buzz every couple of minutes and distract me from reality and kill my concentration. My bid to disconnect myself from the hell of social media was going well…then by Wednesday I had joined Mastadon to see what all the fuss was about. Still silenced my notifications but another fucking social I don’t need but can’t seem to turn away from. Who’d be me?

So like I say - stuff has happened, but was it worth reporting on? Did you need to hear all that? Did I need to express it in this format, in this way, at that time?

I spoke to my sister about our mom. A freelance journalist, she never had a moment where she wasn’t either working, or finding ways to turn the thing she was doing to relax into the next piece of work. She wrote books, made music, even ran workshops in literature and improv comedy. She retrained in her 50s to be a teacher. Always moving, always working. She actually wrote a book called ‘Working It Out’ about being a workaholic. She was a dreamer and a hustler - always figuring out new angles to do new things and achieve whatever passing dream she had. She was great. But it was also kind of unhealthy. No work/life balance - life was constant work. We both see a lot of that in ourselves, my sister and I. Running around like headless chickens to accomplish projects and goals that we have imposed entirely upon ourselves for no clear reason. Whether it be 100 push ups a day not for Cancer Research, or ensuring a new blog, complete with comic and playlist, is up online every Friday despite there being absolutely no audience for it, or even self-care stuff like ensuring I run the same two miles every morning before breakfast and carving out time to do the same ten minute meditation, somehow I don’t seem to do it unless I am imposing the pressure of a deadline on myself. Filling my days with jobs and pressures to ‘get things done’ that there is absolutely no essentialism for doing. Even the reading I do for pleasure can be turned into a chore as I perceive it seldom as a book I am currently enjoying, but, more often, as the book I have to get through in order to read the next one. I am my mother’s child.

Sabbatical began with a purpose: to make sense of this time away from work as I figured out what the fuck I was going to do with my time away from teaching now I suspected academia was no longer the route I wanted to take. It was an idea of self-record and self-reflection, originally conceived as something I might do privately, on paper, and then put together and put out ‘zine-style, like some of the favourite punk ‘zines of my youth. Instead, it became a blog, because who has time for paper and printing in 2022, let alone physical distribution? But ultimately, the original idea was destined to reach an end-point eventually. Some moment where the writing stopped and the compiling and printing began. I therefore wonder if Sabbatical has served its purpose?

Since I started this ten weeks ago (I took a break for half term, remember), I have come to terms with my unemployment and my future. I have kicked around ideas, figured things out, delved into the past and looked toward the future. I have made audio records of the time away from work in my playlists and written records of my journey through my words. I have gained no real audience of external people desperate for future issues and, personally, have gained the clarity I was looking for as well as opened up the new form of self-expression: the comic. If all I ever gained from doing this were the comics, it would have been worth it, but I have gained way more than that in terms of self-expression and insight into myself. Trying to put a narrative frame onto each week, articulate its highs and lows and what I was thinking, has been incredibly useful. But I believe the project’s self-imposed insistence on a new ‘issue’ every Friday and the time that it takes to put it together may, at this point, with my future a little clearer, a new job on the horizon, and only limited work-free weeks of my sabbatical left, have meant the project has outlived its usefulness?

I’m still not 100% sure because, let’s face it, I love blogging even if no one else reads this shit. Long, personal, over-sharing missives about my life have been my trademark type of blogging since I started in 2004. I will still blog on here even when Sabbatical ends, but having the weekly deadline has motivated me to do it far more frequently than I ever did before. Yet last week I was having similar misgivings and asking similar questions about the worth of doing this. Lorne Michaels has always said of sketches on Saturday Night Live that they don’t go on live at 11:30pm because they’re ready, they go on because it’s 11:30. On the one hand, that’s a great celebration of doing things and not worrying about perfection. But on the other hand, someone could reasonably ask what might happen if 11:30pm came along one Saturday night and there was no SNL? The world wouldn’t end. And furthermore, the weekly process is unsustainable. Frequently the cast take breaks. Disappear for a few weeks at a time, have entire holidays off. And SNL actually has an audience. When they don’t do a show, people actually miss it.

My thinking therefore - once again writing it down bringing clarity, as did talking it through with my sister - is to bring this thing to a pause. Not this ‘issue’, but next. Number 10. Like the Downing Street. The way I see it, if I had done the original idea of a physical thing, a run of 10 ‘issues’ would have felt right. It doesn’t have to be the end, but it certainly feels like a good time to pause. I might come back next time I’m off work. Or just to check in? Maybe every future time I blog here will be a Sabbatical ‘issue’ and I’ll just keep the theme running?

Of course, questions then arise of whether issue 10 needs to happen next week, or if it could be a final ‘bumper’ ‘issue’ detailing the final weeks of my Sabbatical? I guess you’ll have to watch this space for that. Well, for at least a week. If it doesn’t appear next Friday then you’ll know: it will obviously be coming at some later point.

I like the continuity of it being 10 consecutive weeks, and it will be interesting to write one knowing it is the last one for a while, but I also like the idea of it reaching an end at the end of the sabbatical. Of course, there is no stopping me from producing issue 10 next week and then the first of a new run, issue 11, at the end of December to mark the end of the Sabbatical? I usually do an end of year post anyway. Hmmm….options, options.

I’m crazy enough that I might do issue 10 next week then 11 the week after and just keep going. Things like this become superstitious rituals as much as anything. You worry what will happen if they stop.

Speaking of superstitious rituals, I realised at the weekend that Aston Villa hadn’t won a match any time I’d been watching them wearing my brown glasses. All their September victories I had been wearing my orange pair. Indulging in sporting superstition, on Sunday, for their match against Liverpool, I put on the orange ones, and we won. So I guess I have to wear the orange ones every match from now on until we lose again!

Whether it’s next week for the final issue, or weeks from now, rest assured, I will be here to bore you at least one more time with the inner workings of how I’m spending these weeks away from work. And once it is over I will be back again after that too, just not as rigidly and weekly. This shouldn’t be a chore, and it’s becoming one. If there were a reason - an audience desperate for each new instalment - it might be worth the mental effort. But as it’s mainly just for myself, I reckon it’s time to give myself a well-deserved break and enjoy the rest of my Sabbatical stress-free.

But don’t for a moment think that the comics will stop!