Monday, January 17, 2022

Tuesday, 1/18

Because I'm insane I've already started to work on them.

I think I may have mentioned in here (once or twice or, uhm, several dozen times) that I have an amazingly busy month this month. Aside from continuing to run two radio stations pretty much single-handedly I still have three weeks left to shoot on “High School Bowl”, a weekend (this upcoming weekend) of announcing at the Noquemanon, and a little History Center show at Kaufman Auditorium a week from Thursday. Yet with all that going on, what did I spend a little time working on this past weekend?

How about something that I don't need to do (if I don't want) and something with absolutely no deadline, unlike everything else?

I believe I've mentioned in here that I'm thinking of doing another series of those “Pieces of the Past” history videos that I've done the past two pandemic Springs. I'm under no obligation to do them; they don't help raise funds for anything, nor is anyone waiting for them with bated breath. Yet I spent several hours both Saturday and Sunday pondering which ones to do and in which order to do them.

Yes, I had many other things that needed to get done this past weekend. But what did I spend time on?

I need help. I really do.

8-)

In all honesty, everything else is on the glide path to almost being finished, and I guess felt I deserved a break from all the stuff I've been working on the past month or so. Now, for most people a “break” would be something normal: bingeing a TV show, going out with friends, or playing outside (although, in my defense, I did also go snowshoeing for a bit to take a break from taking a break). But, as we all, know, I'm (sadly) not like most people. I sat down with a pad and starting writing ideas down. Before I knew it, I had a list of ideas that was so long I had to cut some of them out, a list of the order in which I'm thinking of doing them, and even a shot sheet—videos, interviews, and research I need to do—for the first five or six of them.

That's “taking a break”, right?

I started off just writing down a few ideas so I could perhaps organize them at some future date. I had no intention of coming up with what I came up with, but in a way, maybe it was a good thing. My favorite part of the creative process is just letting ideas ferment in my head and then playing with them when they're there. The fact that I was so engaged in it means that I was obviously enjoying it. And since I was playing with this as a “break” from everything else I was doing, I guess it worked.

Whether or not I feel the same way if I get bogged down in trying to produce all 21 (!) of the ideas I came up with remains to be seen. But that's not something about which I have to worry quite yet. After all, I have two radio stations, three TV shows, a cross country ski race, and a Kaufman program to worry about before I do anything else.

But if I get through all those in the next two weeks, at least I have something else to obsess about waiting in the wings.

(jim@wmqt.com)

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