I’ve turned my pain into a masterpiece. A body of work anyway. Even if I survive my blues, which, technically I always do, and I get home and hang it up and look around the musty environs of an isolated garage apartment behind a high wooden gate and off a busy boulevard with all bills paid, I’ve a body of work. Some in totes in the closet—reams of white typewritten pages and journals. Some published—also in totes but bound neatly in gorgeous covers designed by Snakes Will Eat You. And most—on here and elsewhere and scattered across the great wide web. 10 years of posts exist here and whether you like it or no (and more importantly whether or not I do) it’s a body of work. I wonder if I’ve only trained myself in the wrong kind of journalism, that Chas is right and blogging is passé and anyway I’m only a narcissist who when he gets home from slinging food and drink is practically buried in his own words. Sadly I am the only thing that’s interested me for the last decade. Sure, I wrote about them some. We picked ‘em off ain’t it though. Shot high and aimed low on the bastards. Point is Creative Nonfiction was wide enough for me to get my arms around what was bothering me and then I took it on the road. Personal Journalism may not pay but it’s lit my way traveling to the southern tip of the Eastern Bloc last summer and down below the Equator to the Land of Eternal Spring last Christmas. The question isn’t if I should write less about The Trouble With Jimbo but even more from the Night Kitchen of my own warring mind. I might not write without the Blues and anyway all I write about are the Blues. Ain’t it motherfucking though.
Also, I parlayed. I think I’m coming through with The Coarse Grind. You tell me I am. Pioneering the dissolution of classic essay writing can be a lonely profession though, and I’m not even sure it’s a profession. I start, see it through, and I finish. If I’m taking the advice I gave writers at my lecture at LSUS in April, then I am writing. Writing is the why of all this and I laugh recalling how worried I was that the real work would only suffer quitting drinking. I write more now than I ever did. Columns and poems, blogs and letters. I have different kinds of hangovers now but that’s another story—and different kinds of damage. I’m still getting to the bottom of it and writing’s the shovel, Good Reader. The last 2 posts on here alone will attest. It’s always a wonder that writing the worst turns and getting my arms around the diaphanous down my mind takes is what always precedes the pick up. I come around. Bet and we do it together, and–isn’t that nice? Point was I’m able to write about “other”, aren’t I? Or am I deluding myself and this body of work is only in turns riddled and addled and anyway volleying between a colossal egomania/devastation and the inability to see a paragraph through, at least in common essay writing and ENGLISH COMPOSITION terms. Ah but don’t too wise—I started this graph declaring I can write about the other and will wrap it by saying it doesn’t even matter. Fuck Macaluso and fuck any idea I’ve ever had about being a paid journalist. One aughtn’t never say never (now that’s a fucking statement) though, especially when it comes to ends. I’m not painting myself into a corner as much as I am fighting my way out of one. I’ll get a book deal out of The Coarse Grind and self publish an anthology of Going For The Throat. They’ll know me by my name and anyway with my legs up and the door wide and sipping honey-sweet Italian black coffee while writing is everything to me. I’m able to take off in my mind, go remote inside and even affect my own psychology. I don’t think it beyond the realm of possibility that I can write my own ticket, and I’m going to keep at it anyway. In many ways my dreams of becoming a columnist have come true.
As far as my other dreams, well—it’s been 10 years since I rolled into town and I’m spinning my wheels to black. I make more money playing music than my dayjob, I just need to book enough shows to live on. A steady check is more than a steady check as I’m sure these posts will attest. I’ve got an ingrown dread of being outdoors but I’m at a different fork now. Doesn’t mean the shows should just be up for grabs but the path for me is perhaps somewhere in the middle of playing music for a living and gigging as much as I work the dayjob. The dayjob’s alright, Good Reader, for now. I just need to get a hold of my damage, what else is new, and make the most of my days even if it means 16 hours at it, for weeks at a time, bartending and serving and banging them out on a Selectric II in the A.M., James Kelman and me, and getting out on the road and finding for you, my People. I know you’re out there.
See you soon motherfucker.
Jim Trainer — Back in the Game from Michael Batchelor on Vimeo.
Going for the Throat 
Are you worried that having a day job is keeping you from feeling that sense of urgency that might make you do something more significant with your writing or music? If so, I wouldn’t worry about that. It comes down to the difference between vocation and avocation. A job that pays the bills vs a job that pays your heart. You sometimes need both. My daughter slings pizza dough and is pretty good at it and it pays her bills, but she is an artist when she isn’t covered in flour and pizza sauce. Having the money she needs from her job gives her the freedom to fill my office with costume designs and paint and myriad other materials. She worries that if the fun becomes the job, will it be fun anymore. Keep writing even if it’s for your own sanity. That day job is keeping you stocked un typewriter ribbon and paper and a roof over your head. What good is a Selectric without the “electric”?
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