There Is No Sanity Clause

"So, are you thinking of going back to teaching?"

I seem to need a position statement on this one. Not for your benefit, gentle reader - I realise I'm preaching to the converted and to the happy-to-put-up-with-my-whinging camp - but to the parents of friends and friends of my parents who just won't let it go.

So, no, I have no immediate plans to return to teaching. Perhaps you have, in fact, noticed that I DO a bit of teaching on the side anyway - although it certainly doesn't seem to have struck you that I look happier and healthier given that I don't work 18 hours a day and I'm not vomiting compulsively at the sheer terror of going to school every morning. Doing what I do still makes the world a better place with the pleasant side effect of making me a better person. I've even started WRITING again, for Christ's sake. Now, isn't that a wonderful thing, given that I've been telling you that's what I want to do with my life since I was five?

I know that for the most part they mean well but I wish that some people would fuck off and worry about THEMSELVES, for a change. Thank you.