4801/17460
Only 2540 days until my 20,000th day of life. Doesn’t sound much does it, but it’s pretty much seven years. Obviously I will have to keep blogging until I hit that milestone. But then I can stop. You can stop any time you like. But you won’t.
I seem to be getting my working mojo back and got back into the balance of having enough sleep and doing enough exercise to not fell exhausted all day. But enjoying writing again. I had a lot to pack in today as I was trying to get ahead with my Metro columns (it’s the 200th one I’ve done next week), write some new material for my first proper (non-charity) gig on the year and get a bit further with my sitcom. I’d forgotten I had an interview on Talksport to promote my tour in the middle of the day, but realising that I couldn’t waste a second I got my laptop out on the tube. Writing columns and blogs hasn’t been too much of a problem in the last year, but getting my script writing mojo back has been a real problem. I thought it might be over. But finally this month I am getting excited about writing again. The sitcom script, provisionally entitled “Everything Happens (for no reason)” is ticking along and I am hoping I might finish a first draft at the weekend (we’re off on a short break next week which has given me some impetus) and I am also getting some ideas about what I might do with for the all new AIOTM. We’re doing some filming for some teaser bits and bobs tomorrow so I should have been learning my lines for that too, but there are only so many hours in the day.
The Talksport interview with Hawksbee and Jacobs went well. I have known this pair for years and they know my stuff which makes things a lot easier. As it is a serious sports station they decided to play a bit from my serious snooker podcast. I have to say that out of context the whole thing just sounded mental. You really need to listen to all 69 half hours (and watch and listen to the four specials on my DVDs) for it to make sense. If I hadn’t known better and had been listening at home I might have felt that we were listening to a deluded middle-aged man have some kind of breakdown, rather than an internet pioneer and entrepreneur on the verge of making millions from his podcast work.
I didn’t manage to get any new material into shape for tonight, but it was useful to have a crack at some of the Happy Now? material that I haven’t done for six weeks to see if I still knew it. Mostly it came back to me and it went down really well. It’s ridiculous really but doing a good gig like this lifts my mood so much. I bounced down the stairs to the dressing room like a man with much younger knees and sang loudly to myself. I can’t let myself go and be happy in any real life experience, but somehow, on stage, even when I am talking about my inability to live in the moment, I am able to do exactly that. It’s a drug and my wife is pretty certain that I get withdrawal symptoms and become more difficult to live with when I am not taking the drug. But I was delighted that my slightly esoteric material went down well with the crowd and I haven’t been taking this drug much in the last month or so and I got pathetically high off it. It’s cool to have a job I love and it’s great to have a day when everything flows well, but it surely speaks of some deep personal inadequacy that I find it hard to enjoy myself that much in real life. I am getting better at that though.
