Day 108. In spite of all the danger. (18/4/19)

Want an insight into how this works? How some of this works at least, as it differs all the time depending on who you're working with. There's no one way to collaborate, no one way to create. You genuinely make all this up as you go along.

So, as we've discussed a few times, you make your life up as you go along.

Had a meeting on Tuesday. Lasted from 10am to 8pm. And the cabinet think they're putting in a shift by working 10-5.

As a result of the meeting there were notes. Then there were changes to this piece of work in response to the notes. Then there's email conversations. And the whole thing just keeps growing.

I have another meeting on Tuesday. And I don't need to be at a certain point for that meeting but I intend to be. Because I have personal targets.

Targets. The things that have always motivated me. It doesn't matter how often I quote the Douglas Adams maxim 'I love deadlines, I love the whooshing sound they make as they go past', I genuinely love deadlines. I love having something to aim for. I'm motivated by the work, by getting the work done, by seeing an end result.

I've been in jobs where you can't see the end result produced as an outcome of your input. I really don't like them. Despite not being even vaguely practical, I'm motivated by the idea of 'I did that, I made that.'

For instance, this:

I walked into Waterstones about an hour ago. Saw that my book on Liverpool's 2015/16 season, 'They Say Our Days Are Numbered', is still on the shelf. Only one copy of it as it's about events from what now seems like the far past, but it was facing forward in the rack and visible from the escalator.

That's a feeling that. Still a buzz.

And I was in town because I was recording an Anfield Wrap at 4:30. Which meant leaving ours at 3:30.

And I knew how much writing I wanted to get in before the meeting so I was sat at my desk ("This desk, right here, this is where the magic happens" to quote one of my own plays) at 8:30. Writing. No faffing around. Straight in. Moving bits round, adding people who'd gone, finding new things for people to say to each other.

It's 7:10pm. I'm back at the desk. I'm finishing this off.

I haven't had my tea yet. All I want to do is get back into the script.

This new job I've invented? It doesn't have bank holidays. They're not a concept. Any day can be a bank holiday. And a bank holiday can be any day. Spending eight hours in rehearsals or auditions or at the desk is more fun than any job I've ever had.

So, after decades of lamenting the fact that I wasn't able to have bank holidays off like 'normal people', I'm now looking at the weekend and going, "footy on Sunday, could get a couple of days writing in here."

It's my time, I can do anything I like. It's bloody great.

(Soundtrack: The Beatles, Anthology 1. Because why not? And because it's about how they became the next thing on an ongoing basis and everything is about becoming the next thing all the time. And I was one of the first people outside EMI to actually see a copy of the thing. Might tell you about that at some point.)