5737/18757
Ernie continues to sleep well at night, but not as well in the day. And I have been more exhausted than I’ve been for ages. Perhaps the extra stress of getting little rest time in the day counteracts the relatively good night time sleep or maybe its biorhythms (who remembers those?) or something. We have had the dog a bit more (we’ve been sharing her with Catie’s parents, but are gearing up to take her on full time in September), so maybe it’s just the exercise of doing the walks that’s killing me.
My parents-in-law came round for lunch and then stayed to look after the kids for the afternoon and I had a long nap. Which was great for me, but not so great for the blog. We’re hurtling towards the blogs 16th birthday. It will be able to get married (with my consent) in December. And have sex with other blogs. But not vote. At least that’s something. Weirdly, after all the years of being stupidly busy and still finding time to do it, it’s now, when I am ostensibly on holiday that I am struggling to find the time or inclination to update. I am parenting of course, but not on my own and there’s still plenty of time I could be blogging, but perhaps the issue is that my days are the same and there’s not much to document.
Having said that, this whole idea came out of the fact that I was stuck in my house, failing to do any work or go out very much and I still more or less managed to find stuff to write about back in 2002 and 2003 when my days were full of void and my writing mojo had largely deserted me. And perhaps that last part is the issue now. Having taken my foot off the gas with work, I am more reluctant to get back to it. 16 years ago my life was empty and that was putting me off and now my reticence comes from realising comedy isn’t everything.
I know. That’s quite a thing to realise.
I still love it and am still going to do it, but it no longer consumes me. Or maybe my audience has just changed. And gone down to just two. But it rarely got above four anyway.
Eating blackberries off a bush, hiding under a blanket with my daughter for 15 minutes in the hope that my wife might come into the room and we could hide from her (even though she was unlikely to and my legs were sticking out anyway), seeing my daughter making my son laugh by using the bum bit of the jumperoo as a superhero mask, getting cuddled by a baby. None of those things are as good as having my own TV show and all the cocaines I can eat. But as that genuine type of happiness has eluded me, I will have to make do with the lesser happiness of trying and mainly succeeding to be a good dad and trying and occasionally succeeding to be a good husband.
I think I’ve been extraordinarily lucky, mainly without realising it and as much as I regret the time I wasted in my life due to self-doubt and focusing on the wrong goals, I’ve somehow managed to find my way through.
I can’t really see me giving up the blog any more than I am likely to give up comedy. But just two months of almost no work and I look at the people at the Fringe and wonder not only how they put themselves through that wringer, but how you’d even go about creating a show. What kind of self-confidence would you need for that? And what kind of idiot would pay to see it?
My job is insane. Maybe that’s why I usually can’t allow myself to step off the merry-go-round. You don’t realise you’re caught up in confected madness til you step away and look at it.
But you could say the same about the ten times more nuts merry-go-round that I’m on now.
