I AM NOT A COMMITTEE

I’ve been writing away on my latest projects and it’s that steadfast problem that every ‘one man band’ has to consider is the utter lack of time to get everything done.

We all know the feeling of there never being enough time to finally complete all of the odds and sods that we have on our plate. It doesn’t matter what profession you’re in or what your life gives you, there’ll always be a time when you don’t have enough day to cover all of the tasks.

So what to do?

Get some help.

If you can find a way to offload some of the things that you have to do, say getting a trusted helper to look after all of the communications you get, it can give you more time to get down to the big creative stuff. All so simple.

Now what happens if the number of voices involved grows and grows?

A publisher could want to have a chunky say in how any narrative unfolds, telling the author what they want said. Film directors are regularly told by ‘the studio’ that certain creative choices have to happen or others have to not. Pop music can appear to be a merciless production line where the artist’s clothes, hair, attitude, and whole skill set are wedged into the mould of what the ‘top brass’ want to see and the central creative core of who the artist is gets buried deep down in favour of the expected.

Now this isn’t to suggest that all creative people are somehow being chained to work they don’t want to produce by cadres of brutal executives who are looking to wield their cookie cutter on everyone they see. It’s more of a way to consider that the media we all consume is very often the result of choices made by vastly more people than we think.

I’m a big fan of examining the work of others to see if they’re doing something which I can use. Years ago I went on more than one trip across the country to different sites in the company I was working in to see for myself what they were doing that allowed them to deliver better results in a certain metric than I was. I learned a lot. There were ideas that I thought were positive so I used what I could. In my writing, I listen to my wife, Jo, when she beta reads my stuff because she can suggest things that i may not have thought of, not seeing the wood for the trees.

But if the number of people giving their opinion just grows and grows, the meaning and heart of the work can end up being degraded by the sheer volume. If you add in the idea that some of those suggestions then can’t be ignored, regardless of their value or lack there of, the story is taken from the original creator and instead handed to a committee who will no doubt disagree on almost everything.

The creative process is tough to navigate at the best of times but having billions of voices crying out for their version of the thing to be the one to take precedence will ultimately leave a jumbled mess which just doesn’t work.

I’ll keep on creating stuff, and I’ll continue to have a smaller number of people who give me input to shape what I’m saying because I want to always make sure that my message doesn’t get lost.

I’m not a committee, you know.

Stay safe all.

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Have you made a new years resolution?

Every year, millions of people decide to set themselves a goal of doing more of something, less of something, picking up a new hobby or giving up a bad habit and then do their very best to stick to what they declare.

So why do so many of us fail?

We so often put ourselves in positions where we over estimate our abilities to complete the task at hand, not because we’re all just weak willed, but that we don’t really want to make the changes we’re attempting.

The idea of the new years resolution takes what would ordinarily be a choice that we’re making to improve our lives ad makes the new year bit more important than the resolution. You’re supposed to make a resolution at that time of year so you have say something when asked.

Thousands of years ago (ish) I used to smoke. I tried to give up on a fair few occasions, including more than one new year but always slipped backwards. It never seemed to work.

We eventually stopped smoking when we didn’t focus n the big gesture and talking about it with anyone and everyone for weeks beforehand. We spoke about what we wanted in life and just did it.

New years resolutions are great on paper but when we pile pressure on ourselves to ‘resolve’ at the right time rather than the correct time for us we just set ourselves up for failure.

Maybe we should just do what’s right for us rather than worrying about what everyone thinks we should be doing.

That sounds like a pretty decent resolution, don’t you think?

Stay safe.

I KNOW THIS

Went back to work today. I’ve been working from home for the last two weeks but having the chance to get back on site has been oddly needed. I parked the car, psyched myself up and made my way for the entrance.

Now normally, I would have just scanned my badge and made my way into the building but thanks to the delightful pandemic that’s sweeping the world, things are different. Now, rather than the usual wander into the building, there’s a new process similar to the queuing you do at a busy theme park. The snaking line led to a tent, which takes everyone through a screening area where we have temperature checks.

It’s great that the company take the health of everyone on site so seriously and the greatest hardship which came from this was me having to walk a few more steps but as I was heading into the building, I couldn’t help think about what the new walk into the building reminded me of.

It wasn’t that it was wildly invasive for us to walk into the building but the first thing that went through my mind was the above.

And that’s the point of the post.

How often do we look at things that happen in the world around us and have the way we see those things affected by some oddly similar yet off kilter idea. The walk into work wasn’t really like that but that’s where my mind went first of all. No damage done, kind of made me laugh.

But what happens when something like this isn’t viewed like Total Recall but instead a much darker idea?

The news has stories of the Police having to speak to members of the public who aren’t following the guidelines concerning social distancing on a far too regular basis but if your first thought on this fact was guided more by the authoritarian society of the very same film and you could start to see the things outside as being the actions of a pulverising and controlling state looking to curtail the populous.

Each of us is guided by our experiences so we can’t completely distance ourselves from possible biases but knowing that we have to make an effort to view each event fairly can mean that we don’t end up sending our opinions off on a wild tangent.

Could you imagine being told every day that a single group of people, be it a religious group, a political party or an ethnic minority, are responsible for all of the evils in your life? Could you imagine that you’d be able to objective when assessing what may or may not be going when all you’d ever heard on a particular group had been negative?

We all have our opinions on things and every day, those opinions surface and can nudge us in directions that may not be right. Thinking we know one thing because it looks and feels like something else is a decent place to start but only ever seeing things one way can mean no-one ever grows.

Stay safe everyone.