{Occupational Hazards}[30th April 1978]

[Redbook2:117-119][19780430:1500a]{Occupational Hazards}[30th April 1978]

19780430.1500

[continued]

I suppose that I find difficulty in explaining myself because of an instinctive awareness (aroused through experience) that my attempts at self-discovery will not be accepted. So I have only now realised that everyone who knows about my writing – even S[E-T, my literary mentor] – believes that I want to stop work in order to write. Of course that would be very nice; but it is not yet essential. What is essential is that within the next couple of years I find some occupation which, while giving me enough money and time to write, leaves me sufficiently free from stress to write creatively.

Stress is the killer, not only of men but of unrelated creative activities. I am not afraid of stress in the short term, but it does tend to take my whole energy: I shall soon – very soon – have to choose between a less stressful occupation with creative energy and time and probably lower earnings on the one hand, and a career structure of my present kind on the other. Actually I don't think there is any choice: being what I am, with or without talent, I make the choice – for creativity, against stress – by conscious and unconscious lapses (or acts) at work almost every day. 'Stress' includes such factors as hierarchy, time-pressure, rivalry, smartness [of appearance]: being so much aware of the ultimate lack of necessity for all these things (found by continual repetition of the question 'Why?', for example*), how could I not choose to reject them? It is this that makes my success within a structured organisation such as my present firm extremely unlikely.

I shall, I hope, continue to take the present series of exams until I get through or fail: these thoughts occupy the gap between the end of formal training and the exams themselves, but they do not signify despair or abandonment, although I have slowed down somewhat. But one of the virtues of my particular pattern of employment at the moment (as I hoped might be the case) is that these 'natural breaks' do give me a chance to re-assess my progress and direction.

*(!Only to myself, I presume)<921011>

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