Labor Of Love

Seven years ago, for the first time since I was 14, I could not find a job. I studied the want ads diligently. Every time I saw a position advertised I thought I might be remotely qualified for, I applied to it. I sent out queries to scores of colleges, schools and companies, carefully attaching my C.V. Few replies came back. "It's your American degree," people told me. "It's your age," others said. "It's the field you're in," one woman told me. "Nobody needs English teachers in this area."

Whether it was my age or my degree or my field, it was definitely depressing. All the people who needed to learn EFL lived in the big cities. Nobody wanted to learn Japanese.

But our family needed to eat and my husband was struggling to find work himself, so I did what I could. I signed up with a temporary job placement company and started going on interviews. I was thrilled to get a long-term temporary job doing legal typing, but the man I worked for was hopelessly messy and disorganized; filing cabinets bulged with out-of-date files and piles of current files teetered on top of high shelves. Paralegals would come in, desperate to find missing files for cases soon to be tried. My attempts to put things in order, however, were met with general disapproval. "We've always done it that way," the others told me. "You'll just have to put up with it." Once, in the hallway, a former file clerk told me he'd had a nervous breakdown. "I couldn't take it anymore, d'ye ken?" he whispered, looking over his shoulder. "People screaming for files I couldn't find -- it did my head in! You've got my job now," he added, looking enormously pleased. I was never happier to leave a job in my life.

The next job I got was working for a woman who was wonderfully organized. I was replacing someone who had recently quit. I was thrilled to be working in such a tidy, smoothly-running office, but alas, the woman I was replacing must have realized her mistake: she came back to work.

When I heard the local college was looking for lifelong learning teachers, I quickly put in my name as a Japanese language and culture teacher. I was accepted, and given a short training course. On registration night, my heart fairly raced as I prepared my props: origami paper, sets of chopsticks and crockery samples, a Japanese cook book, my ink, paper and calligraphy brush set, my bag of kimonos and obis.

Only one person signed up to my course, so it could not run. The belly dance instructor had ten students register for her class, the guitar teacher had a dozen, and the upholstery teacher was swamped. As I packed up my things to leave, I bit back tears.

After teaching two years in North Cyprus, we came back to Scotland knowing that the job situation had gotten worse. Then out of the blue, my husband found a job opening in his field. He applied and was immediately hired.

I remained unemployed. "Look on the bright side," friends kept saying. "At least you have plenty of time to write!" I love writing, and yes, it was great having plenty of time. But I wanted to work. "Don't quit your day job," agents and editors tell you. "Very few writers make ends meet on their writing alone." This was painful to hear. I wanted a day job. If only I had a day job!

Then a friend asked me to help her translate a book. No sooner had I started than I got another job, editing manuscripts. Then I met a woman whose son wanted to learn Japanese, followed by a handful of Japanese housewives who wanted to learn English. More editing jobs came my way too, and finally, a formal teaching job at a university.

I'll finish my first week of teaching tomorrow. I've just turned in my first chapter of translating and rewriting, along with my last editing job.

Suddenly I've got so much work to do, I hardly have time to write. But I'm not complaining: I love the work. And oddly enough, I've never written more.