Head Straightener Update

Hello there

It’s one of my written posts today again, and also again it’s a rather self-indulgent self-analysis post.

I agonise over this sort of stuff (which ironically is just further self-indulgent self-analysis), with a slight worry that it comes over as gloomy.  That’s not really it’s raison d’etre of course, moreover it’s the ethos of sharing the process of creating things.  That sharing, by design, is drawn out and overthought, and I certainly find myself yearning to bring you completed work rather than constant “I’m doing/going to do this”.

I’m sure it’s obvious that creating completed stuff is incredibly time-sapping.  Again, this isn’t a whine, but an explanation. So, by way of example, if we look at the three posts so far this week, the Reboot podcast on Monday was a 90-ish minute record followed by a 7-ish hour edit. Tuesday’s art progress video was edited to 9 mins from a whole day’s filming on Saturday, and the beleaguered emergency Harping On podcast was a two hour edit from an hours record.

So, the training I’ve given myself there, is the shorter the creation time, the weaker the end result.  Which is obvious, but equally obvious is that getting myself into the mood that everything must be brilliant and significant, is unsustainable. Yet no matter how many times I confidently declare that I am going to do things on my own terms, I always revert to type and start the heavy lifting again.  Perhaps the brutal issue is that these are my actual own terms.

See, in private (and even in allusion on here), I’ve been beating myself up a little bit about the Great Defender podcast not showing up yet.  It might be that this is the project I am feeling will have the special spark.  That doesn’t mean it will, but I might be attributing too much importance to it for that reason, and so getting overly anxious about it not launching yet. I end up looking at my itinerary, and having my head in my hands stressing about when I can afford it the proper time. I also inadvertently build it up unfairly for the audience until it can never meet the expectation you've been conditioned to have.

These are the moods where I have to make a conscious effort to reset, and – most importantly – stop, take a breath, and consider what I would advise somebody else saying this to me.  Like most of us, I’m way better at untangling the messes of others than starting on my own knots. I'd go as far as to say I am brilliant at it. Certainly at re-framing issues. With the right detachment it’s entirely possible to ‘take you own advice’ though.

So, over the last couple of days, I’ve been meditating (not literally) on my work anxieties, and have managed – I think – to cut myself some slack on it.  I’m writing this so it’s all down in black and white, which should further help, and before you start thinking of yourself as my therapist, I also thought it of potential interest so worth sharing. Like Rob said in a recent Reboot episode "That's how you work stuff out - you write it all down like the man in Memento".

I’ve mentioned plenty of times in my “broadcast career” a moment regaled in Steve Martin’s autobiography, where he discusses the times at the peak of his stand up success, when he would be playing huge auditoriums like the Hollywood Bowl, and look out at the audience.  The thing he isolated as an oddity, was that – rather than being blown away by how many thousands of people were laughing – he would fixate on an empty seat and it would bother him. Like having a million quid and then stressing that you’d lost a grand in value on your car (that's my metaphor - he didn't say that - I can just come up with this stuff though, which is one of the many ways I am better than Steve Martin).

It's such a useful anomaly to isolate and examine, and can be seen as spoilt or privileged or simply just a case of focussing on the wrong thing, but it is commonplace. A lack of satisfaction, or a tendency to focus on your perceived failings, is such a destructive force.  It also takes your eye off the ball in a hugely counter-productive way. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re doing nowt, or doing things half-arsed/relying on others to do the work for you, I’m the first to say you should give yourself a hard time about it.  This isn’t a get-out clause or handy excuse, it’s a common pitfall that it’s always good to remind yourself of.

So, on that note, I sat down and thought about my return month on Patreon and, rather than fixating on what I wanted to be further along with, looked at it from an “achievement” point of view;

With me producing, myself, Rob and Jon successfully launched the Reboot podcast from a standing start and maintained it. I actually think Reboot is really special and is finding its feet every week.  We have a really unique back history and I reckon most people in our situation would never have "rebooted". That's a USP, and has made the launch all the more satisfying. Now, a further useful reminder for me would be that there have been times in my life that this process has taken (and warranted) every last bit of my available time. When I was initially putting the ParaPod together for example, with the organising and the edits and the websites and the uploading and the logos and the social media and the prep and performance of actually being in the thing, I can’t imagine finding a moment to create something else. So, really, notwithstanding that Reboot admittedly has a much fairer split of workload, I’d be justified in only doing that and being proud of it.

However, I’ve also made a decent start on Tales From Castle Diablo, and delivered two completed stories.  I was instinctively about to type “although I wanted to have done at least three”, but that’s not what we are doing here is it? The third one is well in progress anyway.  These, again, take a decent amount of time to write, edit and complete, and there are already irons in the fire for the progression of that into an actual book. I'm like a dog with a bone on that one.

Even though it’s not been launched yet, I have done a ton of prep on The Great Defender, but that’s all behind the scenes of course, and there was the small matter of Jon and I finally getting together the Rocky Robot plan and pitch, which returned a successful door for next steps. Another thing that, in the real world, I'd have been delighted as a solitary achievement in a month.

I’m a third of the way through a new art piece (the Bounty Hunters), and I knocked up a Bounty Hunter box (like that should have taken any precedence over other things), and have gotten the Bat Poles diorama well on the way.

There’s been occasional correspondence with the distribution companies over box office and legal matters for the film (nothing bad), but that’s the same as the admin that all of us have to do alongside our actual work, so I’m not trying to pass that off as creativity. All of this alongside the other ghost/mystery related telly stuff that I’ve been chipping in/co-devising on, but obviously can’t say barely anything about that. That bit is very creative though, so I’m putting that in.

That was all in one month.

Yet I’m sat here going “but the Great Defender…”, and that’s what I’m trying my very hardest to combat.  I’ve also just remembered that I started putting together another animated thing, but I’ve not told you about that yet.  Totally will soon, as soon as I’ve got all my preliminary design sketches done. This one isn’t for children.  In fact, what I’ve written so far is probably unsuitable for anybody… it’s filth. It even has "sex" in the title.

It's a weird thing to be showing my working out and ‘boasting’ about what I’ve got done, but I think a strong strain in me is the fear of being seen as lazy or non-productive, which isn't helped by my anticipatory self-deprecation.  Connected to this, I also certainly have a character trait of wanting to make sure that folk know how much I’ve done in my contributions.  I’ve no idea what that is all about.  Maybe a paranoia of irrelevance on some level, or something like that, or maybe – just simply – spending so much time on my own working flat out, that nobody gets to see.  So I have this need to point it out.

Like with editing, and me saying how many hours it was, or saying how difficult and fiddly it was.  Yet, I’m not dumb enough to not realise this is completely at odds with what editing is for.  Editing is rejigging everything to make it better, give it more coherence, and the goal is for the edit to not be noticed.  That’s the achievement of an edit.  Then I come along and declare “Well I’ve saved that recording because it was a car crash before I chopped it all up and re-assembled it”, and just point out the stitches because I spent ages doing them. Kind of arrogant really isn’t it?  Like my recognition is more important than putting out the piece as complete.   I’ve always, always done it, and I really, really think it’s time to stop it.  Or try to.  I’m sure I’ll do it out of habit at some point, and if I do a post about the process of it then that’s not the same thing. 

Probably overthinking everything here, aren’t I?

Point is, in that last art progress video, there was a moment where I stepped back and looked at the structure-in-progress and said “Oh I think this is going to look ace”.  That was a surprise to me, and I realised I’d forgotten that what I was doing was enjoyable.  I was so busy trying to do the things I needed to do, and organise my head and itinerary, that I ended up having a moment of essentially thinking “Hey, that looks like the poles from Batm….ohhhhhhh”.

Let us be more aware of the nice things.  And by “us”, I mean me.

Enough about me though, how are you getting on?

Hope you are having a lovely week and that the erratic weather is keeping you on your toes in a good way.

Much love

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