Never Relax?
Week 40 of 2024 brings my first real ‘down-time’ since Spring – and leaves me open to attacks?
To see how Sam Pepys spent this week 364 years ago, follow this link.
I began this week full of optimism. My birthday was coming up, I’d just had an amazing creative idea, we were finally able to sign up with a gym for the first time in over a year… As my dad would’ve said, they were the perfect conditions for something to go wrong.
It could’ve been Monday, when I checked my diary to discover I had to be in Sunderland the next day. I had prepped my programme for the visit OK, just hadn’t booked a hotel or planned my travel – or told Ermma that I’d need to leave Monday afternoon…
Moreover, I hadn’t charged the EV with nearly enough power to get me halfway. This meant making stops along the way – three in total. I didn’t hit my hotel til 2am.
But those same charging stops gave me chances to rest, eat, and even write. Maybe this week’s disaster wasn’t all bad…?
After a delightful start to the week sharing stories of the Industrial Revolution with eagerly enthusiastic learners, I was then thoroughly treated by my awesome wife and kittens. I was still the first one up, sorting the morning’s meds, drinks, and bikkits – and I slipped some work in too – but I was ordered back into bed for 8am to receive some heartfelt cards and incredibly thoughtful gifts.
We then had a bit of a lazy morning, watching one of our favourite TV shows (Only Murders in the Building, which is really good this season…), before we went our separate ways for work.
That evening, our good friends Cherry and Lily came round, bearing a gorgeous birthday cake. Ermma then explored Lily’s make-up kit to help the burgeoning young special FX artist get the most from her materials, which included giving my arm a rather gory gash.
So I arrived at the end of the week in a pretty cheerful mood. Could anything destroy that?
How about discovering a hidden cost you’ve given your employer?
A lot of Immersive-Epic’s work these days is in printing, and their previous printing supplier had let them down on numerous occasions – some of which had severely delayed one of my projects for the Dept for Education. I’d managed to find a local alternative, though, who were better quality, gave more options, and were more cost-effective. Wins all round, right?
Except a big thing in the publishing world is your titles’ metadata. It turned out that the previous printer did all that for you; the new one couldn’t, unless you bought your ISBNs off them as well as your printing.
Our ISBN provider, Nielsen, allows you to add some metadata for free – but only the basic stuff. To put in all the enhanced data we were used to providing – and which increases the discoverability and attractiveness of the titles – would cost extra. A lot extra.
So not only was the end of my week spent manually entering a lot of metadata instead of being creative or working to deadlines, but I was also faced with the choice of giving my boss an extra bill or slightly reducing our marketability.
I opted for the latter. Hopefully it would just be a slight reduction. The impact on my productivity was tougher to take, but the energy and optimism I’d drawn from the first three quarters of the week would surely rocket me into the next.
And the good feels didn’t end there. On Saturday, we visited Thetford with a group of our best community theatre buds (I can say that, ‘coz we’re still going to events together six years after the show that brought us together, which is unprecedented amdram post-show camaraderie), all to see another of our troupe: Adz Queenie Bond, in a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
This mercilessly emotive sensation was an incredible combination of Disney’s stirring soundtrack and Hugo’s original themes; don’t expect everything to end happily as per the animation. But wow, were our palms raw from applauding at the end – not least for Adz in the role of Quasimodo.
I couldn’t imagine anyone doing a better job with that role – not because of any typecasting, but because of the sheer talent and vocal range required. Adz became Quasi so thoroughly, my only clue that I knew the actor beneath the make-up was when they held a note so long and loud that very few others could’ve managed it.
And so our Saturday ended in the most joyous emotional cocktail: friendship, art, and hope. I relaxed utterly.
I woke Sunday with the first real cold virus I’ve had all year – and boy did it make itself known.
Nausea, throat sores, difficulty breathing… Not the best way to end your first week trying to re-establish a gym routine.
Maybe being out of it was one of the reasons why I put myself forward for a county council election during that evening’s online meeting of our local Green Party…
In return for the smiles you got from these words, you can support my time spent writing them for about the same you’d spend in a bookshop
Plus you’ll receive the warm glow that comes from knowing you’re supporting creative freedom. $;-)
Weekly Productivity Score: 45%
Quarterly Best: 45%
Annual Best: 74%
Can you share a time when you relaxed at the end of a good and busy period, only to suffer a surprise attack from forgotten commitments, hidden costs, or a virus?