Balancing Act

Perpetual Spiral recently described the forces in play in his life, and how keeping his diverse set of interests going is a balancing act of competing priorities.

And it made me do a stock-take.

Although my interests and priorities are completely different, the balancing act I go through on a daily basis is broadly similar and, as a result, there have been times when I have come very close to the limits of my ability to cope with all of these things.

You may know that I’m currently working in London? And that we’ve moved to Oxfordshire recently? The change of home means that I now have the luxury of sleeping in my own bed each night, but my daily commute has been pushed up to between three-to-four hours.

The increase in commuting time helps me keep a handle on things which is bizarre given the amount of time it takes from each day. I can get away with it because I’m not doing the driving. And while I’m sitting there I have free broadband and an electric socket for my laptop. And I have my earbuds.

So I work.

I work on various projects in different areas of my life. Obviously there are some that I can’t work on but the compartments of my life are easier to manage because I am able to spend 3-4 hours a day commuting.

And those compartments of my life are:

Sophie
It is a complete and utter pleasure to spend so much more quality time with Soph than I used to. The too often used cliche ‘best friend’ doesn’t even come close to describing how she and I fit together. I would like to spend even more time with her and sometimes fewer hours in an evening in front of the laptop, but she is the reason that all of these things hang together so well in my life. Memo to self: We should see if there’s anything good on at the cinema and give ourselves a treat for being the funnest couple ever.

Work (1)
The 9-5. Except I put far more time in to my job than the scheduled 40 hours per week, but I don’t feel too bad about that, because, for the most part, I put those extra hours in whilst I’m travelling. Yay!

Work (2)
As well as being a jobbing contractor/consultant who works through his own Ltd company, I’m also building a network of retained customers. This relationship-building and running my own company both take time and effort that must come after the daily 9-5. The administration/operation of my Ltd Company seems to be taking far more effort than it should. But that might be because we seem to have accountants working for us who are both expensive and incompetent.

Reviewing
This is difficult to categorise. I review bands and albums for an organisation in the US. It’s difficult to analyse because it’s inconsistent. I receive an email from Kirstie in New York asking me to review a few tracks or an entire album or even write a musical breakdown, a kind of precis, of a band. I might get four of these commissions in a month and then may not get any for a few weeks. It is paid work (which is good) but when each commission comes in they usually have very tight deadlines (which is not good). It can take several hours to write each review.

Podcasting
We shouldn’t just count the time spent in front of the microphone – about 55 minutes a week; 45 minutes producing the podcast and about ten minutes writing up the show notes for the website. It might surprise you (especially if you’ve heard it!) to learn that there actually is an amount of preparation involved. But again the prep is not a massively difficult thing to fit in, because I’m able to do all of this (including research songs, read up on bands and generate and deal with related emails) whilst I’m commuting. The podcast earns no money and it also has no cost (apart from the ‘financial value’ of my time). I do it for fun and because I love music and, inevitably, because I love the musicians and the work they do. If I can get just one more person to listen to and enjoy something that I consider is worthwhile listening to, my work here is done.

Writing (1)
This is the pure fun stuff. This is the writing that I do for pleasure and just for me. I’ll work out a synopsis or rough out an idea or just sit down in front of the keyboard and bang out a conversation or a scene that’s been playing in my head for a while. I might also write a characterisation, or perhaps a piece of descriptive narrative, a scene that I want to capture on ‘paper’ that’s been occupying some brainspace lately, or even something I’ve observed that I want to see how it would look in the first, second or third person. Or perhaps switch from active to passive voice. This is fun writing, it earns no money but what I learn or polish as I write may appear in later pieces of writing for which I may be paid. So it’s not just fun really, it has earning potential. For example, I’m currently roughing out a scene which could be a very marketable short story. But in this genre of ‘writing purely for fun’ I also include writing for this blog. Because it is fun. And experimental (sometimes).

Writing (2)
This is almost pure fun stuff. This is writing uncommissioned work that I just want to write, possibly even because I’m just driven to write it. Characterisations, descriptive narrative, scenes that I have observed, or want to observe, ideas for shorts or longs, or even short stories or something longer themselves. I write a lot of these; even finish most of them. If they’re very good I might pimp myself around various organisations and try to get them picked up. If I’m not successful I might just publish them on the website. Or let them languish on a hard-disk.

Writing (3)
Commissioned work (such as writing book reviews, producing features like ‘nude paragliding in Estonia’, short stories, fiction, faction, PR pieces etc). Usually these are not much fun to write but they do generate income. The most enjoyable is writing for magazines such as Private Eye and NME, despite the often crippling deadlines, but I don’t do much of that these days.

Horses
Vin is, without doubt, the best therapy in the land. Yes I love competing (no matter what the discipline or the level), but I also love riding for pleasure, whether it’s schooling or hacking. And I love being around him for fun. I find that any kind of working around a horse is therapeutic whether it’s grooming, cleaning out their feet, changing rugs, skipping out a stable. And I love the sense of achievement I get when we do something. It doesn’t matter what that something is; just successfully completing a thing is good enough. If I have a day purely to myself I can easily spend a handful of hours at the yard performing Vin-related duties, even taking the lorry out for a spin and filling it up with diesel counts! As far as getting 16 hands between my legs goes, I try to ride five times a week, three times during the working week and Saturday and Sunday.  But sometimes other things get in the way, which is what has happened this week, and as a result I haven’t ridden since last weekend. Boo.

Other things
Under the heading of ‘other things’ there are things that don’t take up sufficient time to rate an activity category of their own, or things that might be on the radar but haven’t yet materialised. Chief amongst these is the record label which I’m setting up. It’s a big bag of unknowns but it will operate under my guidance, with other people doing the work. I don’t expect my input to be that much, apart from offering advice, helping make decisions and determine policy directions. There are other things in the ‘other things’ category that relate to even more other things (if you see what I mean). Spending quality time with Sophie, for example. Fitting in visits to Daughter. Visits to the in-laws. The list is quite long really. Add to this the ‘sorting out’ of the recent RSSFeed/hosting issues with crappy old Servage and transferring things to Shiny New GoDaddy and the list starts to grow longer. New on the horizon is getting involved in organising a band tour next year!

So that’s it really. Add those things together and you get a fairly typical week.

How does yours look? Feel free to pick this up as a meme (but let me know so I can come and be nosy!) or do something in the comments.

B.