Damian Robb

The first thing I’ll hound you with today is the music of Run RIver North. I’ve been listening to their album of the same name and haven’t been able to stop. It’s got a lot of great tracks on there, so much so I that I had a real tough time choosing one to share with you all, so I didn’t, I chose two. Hopefully they’ll pair well with today’s blog, so have a listen while you have a read.

Needless to say if you like these tracks you should check out the whole album.

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A friend implied the other day to my girlfriend that she suspected we would be busy on the 14th of February due to us being lovebirds, with the 14th of February being the day for love. This was not the case. Instead we went and watched some of my friends take on a five kilometer obstacle course in which they often ended up falling into water. Romance was not really part of it, reapplication of sunscreen was. I’m not a fan of Valentine’s day. It simply is an invented holiday however you look at it, one loaded with expectation and a smidge of greed. The idea of it being a romantic holiday is even more ludicrous if you look at the history of the day. As you’ll see in this link, romance wasn’t really part of it, men whipping woman with the hides of freshly slain animals was.

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I’ve been thinking lately how the statement often found in TV and books “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental” is straight up bull shit. In the script I’m working on at the moment a number of the key characters are without a doubt versions of people I know, to the point where I’ll need to change the names at some point down the track lest they actually share that person’s name as they currently do. Somehow I don’t think I’m the only person who does this. In fact I would hazard a guess that just about any writer you meet would admit to using people from their lives in their stories, and the ones that say they don’t are more than likely doing so subconsciously (or liars!). For good reason. The people in our lives are multifaceted, nuances individuals with real, and often conflicting, motivations. They are a treasure trove of story, one that any writer would be foolish to waste.

The statement should read “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is done with great deliberation and thought, thanks for being an interesting enough person to write about”  or something to that effect, maybe with something in there about names being changed and that they don’t get a percentage of any profits, soz.

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Another thing I’ve been considering this week is unplugging. By this I mean reducing my time attached to screens. As my hobbies run in the introvert fashion and because almost everything is transferable to a digital format these days I’m almost always on my computer. I’m doing different things, and some (definitely not all) are productive, but that still doesn’t discount the fact that I’m on my computer or phone an inordinately long, sometimes regrettable, amount of time.

To counter this I’ve decided to unplug one afternoon a week, basically ban myself from screens no matter how much I kick and scream (in this scenario I’m both the parent and the child). Wednesdays I’ve decided, for no other reason than it sits in the middle of the week and I like symmetry, I will get home from work and unplug. I’m hoping this will force me out of that cyclical weekday rut, creatively push me to try different things, and basically just gives my eyes a break from looking at pixels.

No doubt it’s going to be a wild ride. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Talk soon

Damian