2010 is here, and it's hitting me like a ton of bricks. January? That was just a preamble. Looking at my work diary, it's not likely i'll have any free time until Christmas 2010, and not arriving home from work until 9:00 at night has already become a fairly regular occurance.
I'm not complaining about that though to be honest- as painful as it often is, I genuinely love my job. Today however my optimism has been shattered by the realisation that it is however going to utterly destroy my attempt to complete a year of #oneaday, sadly.
I'll keep it up for as long as I can, but unfortunately I just can't work out a way of reasonably accommodating it into my life. My work is utterly draining, and the minor amount of free time and energy I have remaining at the end of each day is going purely into writing this. I barely manage to balance my work and social life as it is, and writing every day is basically removing a huge chunk of the latter. I've barely even had a chance to play videogames since I started, which is an awful shame as it's basically my favourite thing to do.
I'll keep going for as long as I can, but realisations like this that make me genuinely very miserable. I'm naturally driven towards jobs where the work is remarkably hardcore, but at the same time I'm so very jealous of all the people who can be home by 6 every day, and get the luxury of being able to take functional brain home with them too.
The most frustrating thing of all, is that I really want to do this. It means a lot to me, and I love doing it. But I can't keep doing it through bleary eyes late at night, the full extent of my intelligence and creativity quota sapped by a day at the office. I'm an awful perfectionist, and it's not the fact that I have to write every day of the week that I find so upsetting, it's the fact that I know I'm rushing through most of what I write so I can squeeze in a life on the side.
Anyway, fuck this - i''m going to bed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I will miss your posts Matt! They're always entertaining and well thought out, but I do understand that they can be really draining. I think it's probably more realistic to aim for one a week, unless you want to drive yourself into a nervous breakdown!
ReplyDeleteYou could also post tumblr style funny pics/vids- kinda cheating but it might make you feel better.
Your #oneaday will be remembered!
Having slept on it, I think what's important is that if not for starting this project I never would have started a blog. No matter what happens I'll make sure I keep updating it regularly, It just might be three times a week rather than 7...
ReplyDeleteAnyway - time will tell.
Down, but not out!
Do keep writing, and don't think that just because you can't write every day that it's somehow a "failure". A lot of people (including myself) take an "all or nothing" approach, meaning basically that "if you can't do something well, don't do it at all".
ReplyDeleteNot all of my 32 #oneaday posts so far have been great. Some of them haven't even been a little bit good. But making the effort to sit down and write one every day - whether it's in the middle of the day, as today's was, or at 3 in the morning after coming home hammered on gin drunk during an evening's board gaming - is giving me something of a sense of "discipline" (for want of a better word) with my writing.
The original idea behind #oneaday was to make time to write for yourself. It shouldn't become a chore at any point. So keep writing when it's good for you, not because you feel you have to.
Good luck!
My philosophy is this: "If you can't do something well, just fuck it off and do something else."
ReplyDelete