6903/19823
I gave up chocolate almost two years ago after recognising that I was incapable of moderation and that the only way to do this was to go cold turkey. Chocolate addiction isn’t as cool as heroin addiction and it definitely doesn’t make you as thin, but I am addicted.
In the last couple of months I wondered if maybe I was mature enough and in control enough to allow myself the occasional bit of chocolate, but I don’t know why I thought that. A lifetime of evidence says that I am not.
I actually kept up the pretence of control for a few weeks, but now I am in the midst of a writing deadline and constantly tired it has become too easy to stuff my face. Not as much as I used to, to be fair and I have kept a slight lid on consumption. But I know that if I don’t stop then it won’t be long until I am breathing in entire family bags of giant chocolate buttons.
Enough. Enough.
I have put on a couple of kilos in the last couple of weeks (partly due to my the birthday meal with my wife to be fair) and I don’t want all my hard work to go to waste. Or to waist.
Tomorrow we die(t).
It was always going to be an uphill struggle with writing today. I am not getting any chance to relax and catch up on sleep and I have to achieve a lot in the next few days. I've decided to try and get the first five scripts into final draft form before I really launch into script 6 (though it's percolating in the back of my mind) and luckily I was able to race through script 1 without having to change much.
Script 2 proved more difficult. It's too long and it's bogged down with chat and not enough action (and that just means plot - there doesn't have to be actual fist fights - though I did add one to script one). I had run out of steam by the afternoon and didn't progress anywhere near as much as I needed to.
I have an unwanted life line in that because of actor availability (or rather lack of it) the last two recording days are being moved to a later (as yet unknown) date. But I really don't want to have that as an excuse to not get the scripts finished in the next seven days. I have other stuff that I need to get on with.
And rewriting could become an endless process. The scripts are never going to be 100% right. There will always be more to add and improve and the work will expand to fill the time available. I would feel a lot better if I had six first drafts that I had to knock into shape, but knowing that there is still one whole script to go is a bit of headfuck.
I still know that I will get it all done, because I have to get it all done, but it’s still not pleasant.
At bedtime my daughter was taking down the pictures that she’d drawn and had chosen to decorate her room with. Most of them had been there for a year or so and one was just a load of scribble so presumably dated back about four years. “Why are you taking down your pictures?” I asked.
“I’m older now,” she not unreasonably replied. She’d had a friend round today and maybe there had been comments or maybe she’d just felt self-conscious. Of course this is an important thing to do and the museum of her imagination will be burned down and rebuilt many times to come. And the scribble drawing is shit. But it’s still a poignant moment.
When even children are putting away childish things.
It won’t be long til she’s seven and then it won’t be long til she’s seventeen. I haven’t had a chance to enjoy her being four yet.
