Damian Robb

I had a day today that despite being incredibly busy felt like I go nothing done.

Quick interlude – I actually just had the perfect visual representation of what I’m trying to explain while I was typing that first sentence. The computer I’m currently writing this on has a bad habit of refreshing every ten seconds or so due to it being connected to this rather clunky system called Citrix. If I’m typing when the computer refreshes it will sometimes highlight the last section of text I typed, then as I continue to write I unwittingly type over that text. This causes me to, upon realizing, delete it all and retype the whole sentence again. At which point the computer will refresh and I end up typing over it again. That’s what today felt like, like I kept retyping the same sentence and yet somehow it never got written.

I did get some stuff done of course – you’d have to go to real effort to have a day where you don’t actually do anything, but then the case could be made that the effort required to do nothing is something, in which case you haven’t actually managed to do nothing at all – but it felt like as soon as I got one thing completed a new thing came along to take its place.

Being that busy wasn’t even so much a bad thing as it was unexpected. I had plans for the day (which mostly involved getting some sneaky writing done at work) and those plans quickly fell into ruin. Expectation is the real enemy here. If I had expected a busy day full of little challenges then I would have been mentally prepared for just that, and it would be unlikely that I would now be bitching about it on the internet, but I didn’t, and so I am. Perception definitely plays a part as well. My perception could be to look back at the day that was and not see the things I had planned to do and didn’t, or the multiple tasks that still need to be completed, but to see all the things I did get done; then tally them up to a point where I could comfortably claim that today was a success, and that I am the master of productivity. But that’s the tricky thing about expectation and perception, they’re not really under our control. I think we can influence them through a rational analysis, like I’ve done above, but at the end of the day if you feel like the sentence didn’t get written then it didn’t get written. Perception especially is some scary shit because it literally molds your world around you, to the point that if you perceive it it’s real. For example, if two people experience the same day but perceive it differently who’s right? Both of them technically. I’m sure there’s a short story in there somewhere.

Despite this perceived lack of progress I’m actually getting closer to finishing the first draft of a TV idea I’ve been working on called Trench. It’s taken far longer than I was hoping but I’ll be done soon, at least to the point where I can scrap most of it and start on the second draft, which is already forming in my head as I finalise the first.

Other good stuff that’s going on today is that it’s my anniversary with the Lady Holly, and to celebrate it we’re going out for dinner and then over to the drive in movies because we’re adorable as hell.

Talk soon.

Damian