Category: status

God, I don’t want to be in this chair today. I want to be outside cutting down and chipping stuff and digging out weeds and planting a couple of things while the mancub here stares at me disdainfully. But there’s stuff to do, and the weather is “changeable,” which in England means it was brilliant sun five minutes ago and it will be hailing five minutes from now, so I’m going to put up with the pain and start breaking more script down.

ON DECK: script breakdowns, some character sketches to look at, a few work emails to write. and a friend’s deck to process.
INBOX: 77, and a bunch of those are delivery notifications for things arriving today.
OPERATIONS: figuring out how to fit more physical media in my office. I have my eye on some blu-ray box sets.
LISTENING: Night Tracks in one early, Bloomberg Daybreak in the other, currently.

Beautiful morning.

I forgot it was April the First, which is amateur’s day on the internet. So anything other than direct contact from verified humans is being turned off today, and I’ll have to waste time tomorrow locating and removing the april-fool fake posts from my RSS feed.

ON DECK: Script, and returning to consult 2/2024. I fell about 16pp short of my March target (technically only around 8pp, but I’m still moving stuff around in that script so none of the pages qualify as finished)
INBOX: 93. I have a bunch of stuff in there to process out as soon as I can see straight.
OPERATIONS: I need to check out early today, as some of the tomato plants in the indoor propagator are getting tall and need potting on and storing in one of the mini-greenhouses.
LISTENING: Added some US election-related podcasts to my list last night, going to listen through them today and decide which I want to keep: Americast, FiveThirtyEight Politics, Somebody’s Gotta Win
CONDITION: Mancub slapped me awake at 7am.

The clocks have gone forward, and I am groggy and not remotely with it. I have to figure out the back end of this script. Fresh start tomorrow.

There is life.

Landed episode one of a thing yesterday, going to see if I can land episode 2 this weekend, giving me a clean desk for Monday 1 April.

ON DECK: Right now, finishing the newsletter.
INBOX: 83, just about to start filing things away
OPERATIONS: from Monday, my days shift a little, and I can get back to making notes here – I have a bunch of material backed up. I also start a new Moleskine notebook on Monday.
LISTENING:

CONDITION: 8hrs on the dot, in two phases because the mancub felt the need to wake me for attention at 8am.
THINKING ABOUT: New material. Which is ridiculous, as I have 20 scripts to write in the next few months, but that’s how my brain works (or doesn’t)

Incredible windstorm last night, but this morning the blueberry started flowering.

I’m across the back half of a script and the final sections of the newsletter today, and the clock is ticking, so this is another single-post day in the notebook.

I am fast running out of March!

ON DECK: Script and newsletter. I have the first script of a new thing in front of me, and I’m feeling my way into the tone. You can outline all you like – you’ll find the true sound of a thing until you start writing the script.
INBOX: 81. I was doing a lot of email on the phone last night.
OPERATIONS: Awaiting new spade and fork
READING: THE VAST EXTENT, Lavinia Greenlaw (UK) (US)
CONDITION: 8hrs 29mins sleep, I have the short-term memory of a goldfish today.
THINKING ABOUT: the immediate future

I think it’s going to be a day. Our oldest chicken, Crazy, died in the night. So before I did anything else, I needed to bury her. The spot I picked to dig a hole turned out to be filled with very old bricks – god knows how they got there – and I got less than two feet down when the handle snapped off the spade. Not ideal. Today was intended to be a nice easy day of scripting, after getting only four hours’ straight sleep the night before last, but now it’s coffee and figuring out how to secure that little grave better against the foxes. Sounds proper rural, doesn’t it?

Crazy, by the way, lived at least three years longer than anyone expected, and ended her days as the demented matriarch of the chicken house, having started as the scrawny oven-ready runt who just ran around screaming until someone hit her, which just made her run around faster and scream louder. I remember having to build her a separate defended space to stop the other rescue hens from murdering her, while, frankly, having some sympathy with them. She died a mad queen.

We have pea sign.

ON DECK: I have to get to grips with this tv thing document today, while also arranging the first draft of a script. And some cover sketches to process. Marking up the boards.
INBOX: 72

OPERATIONS: Buying a few lightweight linen clothes for summer, as I have a feeling this year might be a hot one and the majority of my clothes are winter weight. Also working out where I can put a few more small water features into the garden and sow a lot more pollinators. Centralising a few things with the office to save me some time.
CONDITION: Woken at 730am by a paw in the face

Newsletter went out this morning.

ON DECK: A few hours of scripting and then getting back into a document on a tv thing that I need to file by end of play Tuesday.
INBOX: 77
LISTENING:

CONDITION: Patted in the face by the boy cat after 8hrs 40mins sleep. Girl cat was in the doorway yelling for her breakfast. I suspect they may have teamed up to get me out of bed.