"The Worst Thing That Could Happen..."

Hello there

Okay, that title is a huge exaggeration/clickbait, but I’ve plonked myself down at my desk this morning to jot down a few thoughts. Like I do sometimes.

It’s been a mega-heavy video week, and I’ve found myself a bit tuckered out from it.  Not just the putting together of the video in terms of editing and chopping (which I very much enjoy), but also in doing the stuff that is actually in the videos too (which I also very much enjoy). I already discussed the draining aspect of video production and editing with you last week, but it’s a small price to pay to have a nicely edited and entertaining (fingers crossed on both of those points) at the end of it.

Today I’ve just flopped into the office chair, with a daft to-do list, and this week I appear to have made the decision to do the least fun bits of it.  The bits that often never get done, or certainly get pushed down to the bottom of the list, lurking insipidly and slowly eroding any sense of calm as they stare back, uncompleted.

It’s an awful blustery day outside though, so I’m hugely reluctant to subject myself to going to the garage to do stuff that I’d enjoy where it not for the relentless cold and wind. I do, however, have the Jaws soundtrack on the turntable, which is an excellent choice for covering every soundtrack genre in one go.  Wistful, chirpy, suspenseful and dramatic, you get the lot with the Jaws soundtrack, which is weird for a soundtrack that is surprisingly restrained and uneventful beyond the barely used 'duh-duh duh-duh' hook (this is merely the opinion of the author and this patreon is not affiliated in any way to Universal, John Williams, or the surviving Jaws people).

The other reasons I’m opting for a written post, is I’ve noticed a couple of emerging trends in myself thus far in 2022, which probably bear talking about.

Firstly, I have gone full tilt art-headed.  When I awaken, the thing I am most up for doing is art-related activity.  Whether that’s drawing or building stuff, I am definitely finding myself in a practical phase. Sometimes I will look at the Patreon pages of others who are solely working in art, and get envious.  I tell myself I would be totally content if all I had to do when I got up was sit in the art room and make/draw something.  Of course, with the flitting nature of my creative mind, I would very soon be getting frustrated that I was tied to just art stuff, and wishing my patreon was a bit more mixed up.  Like it already is.  I just get a little self-conscious when all the posts are lumped together.  Like how many Tombstone Build videos there have been consecutively this week.  I’d normally spread them out with stuff in between, but as I have been spending all my time building it, then editing the videos, it’s right at the front of the queue.  Luckily, Rocky making his video has split up the themes for me, so that took a bit of pressure off.  I appreciate him making that and taking up some of the weight of creative expectation.

There’s far worse things I could be in the mood for doing in fairness.  What if I had gone through a phase of wanting tombstones but they had to be real ones from actual graves?  That would have been miles worse.  If I was lugging stolen marble around cemeteries under cover of darkness.  See, these obsessions can manifest themselves in far more alarming ways, so let’s be glad for my relatively harmless present existence.

The second thing I’ve noticed is a marked increase in introspective analysis.  Which is a posh way of saying I’ve been very aware of myself.  I always try to do this in February anyway, as I’ve long held the belief that February is the most dangerous month for wellbeing, but I think it’s been ongoing since the very start of the year. There’s the caveat that I’ve been around a lot of peripheral and adjacent death and illness this year already, which always rattles one’s status quo. I should say that I do this introspective stuff  in a sort of ‘interested’ (if not ‘interesting’) way, rather than with a view of “making changes”.  I have come to the conclusion that I don’t really have the requisite time to “make changes”.

I’m mainly focussing on one thing I’ve noticed about myself in this post though.  I might even be looking for somebody to say “Oh I do exactly the same thing!”, because it sometimes makes me have a tiny mood of being useless.  Not a huge thing, just an underlying pout.

It also ties in to the tombstone build, so we are keeping vaguely on brand…

So, you’ll hear in this Sunday’s tombstone build video, that the much-mentioned blowtorch aspect of the build did not come to pass.  Basically, one of the steps was to wet the surface and then braze it with a blowtorch to give a stone-like texture.  I ultimately did a workaround of it, but here’s what initially happened;

I’d been worried about using the blowtorch.  I’d spent ages buying it, and nobody in the hardware store seemed to have the first clue about how they worked (which made two of us), and I had visions of it exploding, or gassing myself, or just simply burning to death from it.  I am never confident with anything dangerous.  I don’t have that streak to me.  I get ultra-cautious and if I leave it too long, just flat out terrified.  I went through this with the jigsaw, the Dremel, a soldering iron, wood burning tools, the glass cutter, every garden fire pit I’ve ever had, the hot wire cutter, various barbecues, and even the bug zapper thing.  Like I say, ultra-cautious.

Usually, after using them once, I’m then quite happy I know what I’m working with.  I don’t get cocky with anything that could kill me, but I do relax a bit that they aren’t dangerous unless you’re stupid with them.  So, in many ways, the blow-torch not working was the worst thing that could happen to my zen in this tombstone build. I was worried about it, it took me two weeks to even open it, and when I did, it didn’t work right.

In fact, it initially didn’t work at all.  I followed the instructions in putting the distribution gun onto the canister, slowly opened the gas flow, but it wouldn’t retain a flame.  The gas flow was basically blowing out the lighter.  Which is stupid for something that claims to be “Highly Flammable”.  I don’t know the actual science, but no science was seeming to work.  I’d have more joy getting a Crying Boy painting to take a flame than this confounded thing.  Then I obviously started convincing myself I was getting light headed from the gas, and wondered how quickly that would kill me if I carried on. Eventually, after holding a flame in front of it for a whole minute and slowly turning up the gas, it stayed alight.  It didn’t feel safe, all spluttery and erratic (it was kind of like Kylo Ren’s lightsaber in the Disney Star Wars).  I had one test go of it on a piece of foam, decided it was too hot to have any control over, and turned it off.  I then thought I’d give it a go with a much lesser flame, and it never lit again. I chauffeured it back to B&Q, told the lass on the till to be very careful with it, and got a refund. I didn’t film any of this by the way, as it was a test run for when I would be using it, but you’ll see what I eventually opted for instead on Sunday.

Point is, because of how I build these things up in my head, it was a calamity.  Usually, like with – say – the vinyl cutter, I end up bemoaning the fact I spent so long worrying about it when it turned out to be pretty easy, but on this occasion, it seems my concern was validated.  It was almost certainly faulty, but that doesn’t matter.  In fact, all that does, is send me the message that these canisters of compressed gas can be faulty, and it’s only a few more seconds of thought before I am imagining it taking my face off.  I really have loved doing these tombstones, but that’s too high a price to pay, even for their majesty.  I don’t really want the last video to be “and then we place the tombstone on the makers grave”…

For somebody who can be so wooly-headed, I don’t consider myself to be a grand procrastinator, but the perfect storm will persuade me to subconsciously orchestrate a form of procrastination.  That’s how I end up spending a whole day doing anything but what I supposedly want to be doing.  I mean, it’s sort of productive I suppose, but it’s no use to me for patreon posts (even though this one is giving it a damned good go).  I ordered some plastic boxes for the garage to try to avoid any further rodent vandalism (although it has since occurred to me that the blu-ray cases they went for were also plastic so they might have a taste for it now – also, who knew how stupidly expensive plastic storage boxes are…), a mic reflector screen (so we will see if that helps on the audio stuff), I did my repeat prescription for medicine for the first time ever, and finally ordered the prints for the Young Frankenstein, Willy Wonka and Rocky Horror 1 art.

It’s been a pretty costly procrastination, or would have been for normal people.  Luckily, my bank gave me this loyalty card for being with them so long, which is basically a load of free money.  They call it a “Credit Card”, which means they are giving me some credit for being such a great customer.  “Hey, he deserves to be given some credit for being brilliant, so let’s give him a card full of money for him to spend as a treat – we won’t miss it, we are loaded mate” (that’s how I imagine the conversation went between the king of the bank and whoever posts out these gift cards). I'm very lucky.  It would be a nightmare if I ever had to pay it back. 

Hey this post went a bit round the houses, huh?  In a nutshell I noticed that it only takes one thing going a bit wrong for me to get tired and reluctant.  Which is where we are today. That would have been a quicker post.  I also realised that I’d taken a thing out of the box from the blowtorch that I never put back in when I took it back.  I’ve no idea what it is, it’s like a round disc thing.  Probably an essential component to make it work properly, but too late now.

Hope your week is going all fine and happy and to plan over there.

Sending much love as per

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