A Halfa Post

The trouble with my productivity systems is that like a well-oiled machine, it can easy be clogged up. When life gets in the way of my work, I fall behind, and so I abandon my system, work too hard, burn out, and then decide to develop a new system.

The good thing about blogging is that I don’t force myself to do it, so it never feels like work!

The obvious side-effect of that is 2 months without a post.

So it’s 2013. We’re barely into February, and already that looks normal to me.

What’s my ’13 looking like? I do a thing called “Big 4, Little 4” each year, in which I jot down the four main things I want to focus on, and four more “fun” projects, or smaller items that I want to accomplish. I do it (most) every month as well, and it’s always interesting to look back and see how my goals change over the course of the year.

One of my big 4, since I met her, has always been my life comrade “SJ”. She’s something that I want to put time and effort into, always, because relationships are hard. Impossible, if you don’t put the time in.

The panel show that I host and produce, We Should Know Better, is obviously on the list, as is my job: writing/self-publishing erotica.

(the fourth one is private, for now.)

Little 4: Going to the gym, a two-man sketch show I’m (slowly but steadily) putting together, working on the various TV shows that I’m always working on, and something else that I can’t remember at the moment.

 

Back on the horse

I’m aware that a disproportionate percentage of this blog is just about me blogging and my daily routine. But on the rare occasion that I want to sit down and blog, that’s just what I want to talk about – I haven’t really promoted this anywhere, so right now, I’m writing just for me.

It’s Wednesday of the mythical “next week” that never comes, and I’m finally back in some kind of routine. I’ve accomplished plenty over the last few days, but this is the first day that I’ve managed to wake up at 8/blog/write a 6MS/get started on the day’s work by 10.

It was my birthday 6 days ago – instead of having a party, I decided to organise a big comedy gala. It went off without a hitch, and is actually one of my projects that I’m most proud of. I’m going to turn it into an annual event, so mark it in your diaries – November 8th, 2013: Chocolate-Coated Evening will be back.

I was so busy organising everything that I didn’t really think about the fact that I was 25 until a few days later.

When I was 15, I put together a “time capsule”; a bunch of stuff that I thought my 25-year old self would be interested in. It’s been a long and crazy 10 years, and earlier this year when I went to prepare the time capsule, I couldn’t find it.

Rather than weep and sob, I accepted that I should have kept a closer eye on it between the 10+ times I’ve moved houses/3 times I’ve moved states. It’s a pity, but I won’t lose any sleep over it.

Opening that capsule has been so closely linked with “turning 25” in my brain for 10 years, that without it, I don’t really feel like I’ve had that birthday. It wasn’t until I was talking to SJ and the phrase “in 3 years” came up that I freaked out a little – in three years, I’ll be 28. That made it much more real.

I’m doing okay with it all – honestly, I’m too busy to think too hard about it. If it hits me, it’ll hit me, but until then I’ll keep plodding along with my various projects.

Apparently 29 is the one to freak out over. We’ll see how I feel when I get there.

Routine

So I am officially terrible at blogging.

The longer I’m out of my routine, the harder it is to get back into it. This week, I told myself, this week I’ll be up at 8 every day, stick to my schedule…on Monday I had an extras shoot, yesterday was cup day, today is…the day before my birthday.

Fortunately, my method of procrastinating is “getting work that I’ve been putting aside done”, and so today I’ve wiped my old computer, sent some invoices to clients, and uploaded an edit of the most recent We Should Know Better episode. I haven’t done any writing since the start of this month, my new office is crying out to be set-up, and I’m hosting a gala tomorrow night without actually having written any material…but I have full confidence that it will all pull together.

Next week, however…the gala will be done, my birthday will be over, my office will be set up (I’ll do it over the weekend, if not before) and there will be nothing to stop me from sitting down and getting some serious work done.

Except, y’know, it’s show week.

We’ll see how it goes.

Ambition

I don’t think that I’ve ever been accused of being lazy.

I’m not (just) writing that to brag, I was genuinely thinking about it over the weekend, and I don’t recall it ever coming up as a descriptor. I’m ambitious, and I’m completely aware that nothing worth happening happens (especially not lofty dreams such as mine) without a lot of work going into it.

I’m also a big believer in doing things that I want to do. It’s my favourite part of being an “adult” – if I decide that I want to have biscuits for breakfast, I can. If I want to spend the weekend sleeping in, that’s entirely my choice to make. And if I decide that “batteries” are the best possible use of my money, then by golly no one and nothing is going to stop me spending my money on batteries.

(it’s 9:30am on Monday morning, and after struggling to wake up after a weekend of sleeping in, I’m now sitting at my computer next to a pile of breakfast-biscuit-crumbs and…batteries.)

Combine these two facts about myself, and things have a tendency to get a little hectic. I do things that I want to do, and work extremely hard on them. I decided a while ago that I wanted to make a panel show, and so We Should Know Better has been going for almost 6 months now – it’s getting better each month, largely because of the huge amount of effort that the team and I pour into it.

Similarly, the impro troupe that I run had two shows on at the Melbourne Fringe Festival this year, because someone in the group suggested it and so we put the effort in, and ran two shows (that I thought were actually quite successful.)

And for several years now, I’ve had the idea of running a comedy gala/variety night, with the intention of raising money for charity.

On my birthday.

This year, I found the motivation, said “hashtag you only live once” and assembled a team to get it off the ground. It’s on the 8th of November, it’s called Chocolate Coated Evening, and like all good events of this magnitude, putting it together is a lot of work.

Inevitably, work on all three of these YOLOs needed to be worked on at once – the impro shows were on at the same time as the gala needed assembling, and We Should Know Better needs to be put together afresh each and every month.

I like blogging for a lot of reasons; there are a lot of bloggers I really admire, I think it’s a nice outlet for putting thoughts out there, and it’s a nice warm-up “each” morning.

Another thing I enjoy about it is that I think you can chart how hectic my life is by how frequently blog-posts appear. I’m hoping to get a post up every day this week, simply because the storm has passed and this is my week of catching up on all the things that don’t get done when life becomes unbearably hectic. (also topping the list: going to the gym, and doing washing.)

I sometimes question my lifestyle, as a part of that “question everything” philosophy that I’m so fond of, but I always reach the same conclusion: being productive, sometimes insanely so, is genuinely what makes me happy. If I’m feeling burned out, I can move things around and take a break, but that typically only happens after something that consumes my entire life for more than a month.

Part of the reason that I am the way I am is a simple fear of death: I want to leave my mark, and productivity contributes to mark-leaving much more than sitting around and masturbating is ever likely to. There’s so much that I want to do in my brief time on this planet, and I like to spend my time doing it.

A lot of it is because I have no idea what I’d be doing if I wasn’t working on things. I sometimes wonder what other people do with their time (and then realise how patronising that sounds) – but I only know a few people who seem to output as much as I do (and not coincidentally, they’re some of my closest friends/collaborators.)

And I think part of it, in what seems like a contradiction to my friends, is because I believe in having no regrets. If I want to do something, I do it, and if doing it turns out to have been a bad idea then I learn a lesson from the experience and take solace in the fact that I used the best available information to me when I chose to do it.

That’s why I moved in with my girlfriend after only knowing her for a few months. (best decision I ever made.) That’s why I told one of my closest friends something she neither wanted nor needed to know about her ex (we’re no longer friends, and boy did I learn a lesson from that one – but not the lesson you’d think…)

As an atheist, I firmly believe that you only get one chance to stand on planet earth, and that it will be over all too soon. I plan to spend the years I have left working hard on things that I love, and spending time with the amazing people I know.

More often than not, those two are the same thing.

I like working hard, I want to work hard, and I don’t know what I’d be doing if I wasn’t working hard. I spend my time working hard, because I have no evidence to suggest that it’s a bad idea. If I eventually learn that I “should” have been spending my time doing other things, I won’t regret it – when I learn that lesson, I’ll adjust my behaviour accordingly.

So far I haven’t learned that lesson, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to any time soon. Two-and-a-half breakdowns and over a dozen failed projects later, I’m still going.

I’m going to follow my dream if it kills me, because the alternative involves dying anyway.

Back Again

I’ve spent the last few weeks travelling, but now I’m home again, and ready to blog!

My girlfriend Sarah Jane and I went on a lovely trip to all my home towns…Glenbrook, where I lived up until I was 14; Toowoomba, where I lived from 15-19 and Brisbane, my home from 19-21. If I’d stopped in at Canberra (where I lived from 21-22, before moving to Melbourne) the trip would have taken us everywhere I’ve ever lived.

We got to hang out with my brother, sister and cousin for extended periods of time, Sarah Jane met my mother/extended family, and we celebrated both my sister’s 21st and my grandmother’s 90th.

There are certain parts of my life that I have been keeping relatively secret, because certain members of my family weren’t aware of them and I didn’t want anyone I love to learn about it through Facebook/other people telling them after seeing it on Facebook. I’ve now “come out” to all the people who are important to me (I like to do these things in person!) however, and so the list of topics I’m able/willing to talk about online has now grown a bit longer.

This will probably lead to either longer or more frequent blogs, because I (like most humans) like blogging about what’s going on in my life, and on days when that’s all that is running through my mind, I don’t really want to blog about anything else.

October is, according to Tumblr, Bold Moves Month and so this is my bold move. I’m a huge believer in living with nothing to hide (I believe Kevin Smith refers to it as “owning your shit”, because if you tell the world your secrets then no one can hold them over you) and now that my family are caught up with my goings-on, I’ll inform the rest of the world.

Not today, mind you. I’ve got work to do. But in the next couple of days.

Maybe next week.

New Routine

I work from home these days, and so I’m always meddling with my routine, trying to get more work done without burning out. I’ve recently started listening to the podcast Home Work, which is chock full of suggestions on how to become more efficient and all that jazz, and so I thought I’d try something new.

I’m going to start each day with a blog post. (I’ve been wanting to get back into blogging for literally years now, so this is a great way to accomplish double avian homicide using minimal rubble.) Some days they’ll be long, some days they’ll be short, but I’m hoping that if I start each day with a concrete accomplishment, it’ll help give the rest of my time a bit more structure.

I’m also going to do a Six Minute Story before I start writing each day, and I’ll post them over here as well. Each blog post will be redrafted twice, and in the spirit of flash fiction, each 6MS will be redrafted zero times.

What does this mean for you, my currently-nonexistent readers? It means you can expect at least one blog-post each weekday; two, on days when I’ve also got writing to do. I’m not giving myself any rules about what the blog-posts can be about, which means they’ll be anything from “what I’m working on” to “reviews” to “here is a thought I had which doesn’t quite make sense but I’m going to share it anyway.”

Of course, given my track record of keeping things updated, this may fizzle out in less than a week. We’ll see!

Today’s a writing day, so you can expect a 6MS to come up straight after this entry. If there’s anything you particularly want me to blog about, leave a comment. I’m not promising anything (I have a big backlist of topics I’ve wanted to talk about for a while) but I’ll see what I can do.

I’m also going to use this blog to store any other writing projects I do, like Kiandacorp. And if I ever get back into vlogging (something else I’ve been wanting to start up again for years now) you’ll see those popping up here as well!