#359 - Silence in the White House

I’m really not a morning person.

If I were a meal, I’d be brunch. That’s when I like to get my day started. In an ideal world I would wake around nine thirty or ten, futz around for a while and by eleven be ready to start my day. If I was a full-time writer, I think this is how my mornings would go most days.

I’d work on all the stuff that isn’t writing during the sunlit hours. Stop for dinner and time with my wife, maybe watch a show or two and then retreat to my writing desk to imagine far off worlds and imaginary people.

My writing teacher uses this routine and manages to write millions of words each year. This year, in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday, he decided to put together seventy-five books. He’s more than halfway there already for those of you who think that publishing so many books is impossible.

He gets up after nine, does his emails and then goes for lunch with his wife. He might run some errands and then return to the office to work on workshops and to respond to his students.

He’ll stop to make dinner, or they go out returning to read and watch some shows. He often doesn’t get to his writing computer until one AM, where he might sit and work for three or four hours. And this allows him to write millions of words per year.

That’s what I am trying to make happen in my life.

Instead, I got up at nine and immediately started fielding questions from work. It was almost as if the people who needed my assistance were waiting for the clock to turn to nine. The messages came fast and furious, and like most days I stayed and answered them all until about ten AM. The witching hour had passed, and I took a moment to make myself a cup of tea. I ate two boiled eggs as well, since I had made them last night for this very purpose.

I grabbed and Alani energy from the fridge as well. I love a good cup of tea in the morning, but I often crave something cold to wet my whistle as well.

My supervisor had some issues to deal with at home and asked if I would take the three o’clock meeting for her. It was meeting to discuss things about the next episode and one of the last chances to get assets that were missed.

The client sits in these meetings with us as well and they often chime in to give us their opinions when we are unsure of how to proceed or unclear about what they intended. In this way, we are able to deliver a product that best represents the client’s vision.

The car dealership called to tell me a part I needed for my car was in and they wanted to book me in for an appointment as quickly as possible. I explained that I had no idea what he was talking about and that the dealership had replaced my engine under the warranty.

He sounded more confused than me and then apologized before ending the call. This dealership isn’t giving me the most confidence that they know what they are doing.

I had to prepare for this meeting, so I did my best to spend the morning approving backgrounds. One of the new issues we are facing and comes from the need to reduce the number of backgrounds per show, which increases the number of scenes per background, is how long it takes me to approve a painting. Each scene needs to be exported as a jpeg and then cropped to the right size so it can be approved by the art director.

The more scenes increase the complexity. For example, there may be fifty final layers in the painting with notes telling you things like: In scene 50 turn of layer 3, turn on layer 25. So, a file that has a lot of scenes will have a mind-boggling amount of these.

And this is what I faced today.

There are also so new bad habits developing amongst the painters that weren’t there before. We have a library full of clouds for the painters to choose from and they can just drag them into their files. But sometimes the painters don’t remember what direction the sun is coming from, and clouds will end up lit from different sides. It’s not a huge issue, but it’s just one more thing I have to fix.

Lunch time finally arrived. Robyn and I practically ran out of the house to get our walk in. We drove to the park, and it was a gloriously cool day to hike through the woods. We passed on lady that was decked out in a full-length goose down coat. It was fifteen degrees Celsius according to my car’s external thermometer. Cool, sure, but definitely not parka weather!

The walk was perfect. Only one cyclist, although we had to suffer his presence twice, once on his way in and again on his way back.

Very few dogs and their walkers were about as well. We saw maybe two or three pooches the whole time we were there. It was cool enough that there were no bugs about and I didn’t even break into a sweat. It was sad having to leave, but I had plenty of work to get back to. I still had to prepare for the meeting at three. That meant rewatching the Leica reel and double checking all the assets that were listed against the assets that currently existed.

I found two that I had questions about and added them to the spreadsheet. I took a call with one of the painters who had questions about some of his paintings, and we spent ten minutes going through them and getting a game plan together.

The meeting started and I continued to work on approvals while listening into the meeting. Most of the questions did really concern our department, but it’s still good to be in the room so to speak. Some of the things you overhear can become important down the road.

The meeting went by quickly, and I continued to work on approvals. I was getting into the swing of things and starting to get a better feel for this episode. Learning what things I needed to watch out for and what things I wanted to improve or plus. Sometimes just a little bit of extra effort can make all the difference in the finished work.

The day came to a close and I was developing a mild headache. Part of my wondered if it was from too much caffeine. Those Alani energy drinks pack a bit of a punch at 140 mg of caffeine. I played a game of chess and lost miserably.

Kiddo #1 called and asked if I would pick her up at her gym. I agreed even though I hate driving through the city during rush hour. Traffic wasn’t that bad and it was a nice day for a drive. It probably did me some good to get out of the house anyway.

Robyn left to attend her class at the nearby college, and I set about watching the rest of the Jo Koy comedy special I had started the night before. I felt like I needed a rest before I started writing for the evening.

After it was done, I whipped up some pork loins and roasted veg in the oven. I wanted Robyn to have a warm, homecooked meal ready for her return home. My headache was developing into a bit of a whopper, and I found ever noise to be like a nail hammered into my skull. It never occurred to me to take something for it, but I sat downstairs and watched some YouTube videos while to food cooked.

We ate when Robyn came home at the kitchen table. Robyn told me about her day, and I did my best to listen, although my headache was only getting worse.

I went upstairs and took some Advil and then laid down on the bed to rest my eyes. After about half an hour the headache’s intensity started to decrease, and I made the decision to take a hot bubble spa. And that ended up making me feel much better. Likely it was the combination of the drugs and the heat, but I was glad to be feeling better none-the-less.

My plan had been to work on my assignment this evening, but the way I’d been feeling made me reconsider. I printed out the three thousand words I’d written so far, so that I could re-read it tomorrow on the ride into work.

The more I thought about making that trip tomorrow, the more questioned whether it was worth it. I’d get more work done if I got the extra sleep and didn’t waste precious time commuting.

I resolved to use that extra time to work on my assignment, to get the rest I needed to give myself a little selfcare that I obviously needed.

With the weather cooling down this past week, we have been sleeping with the windows open, and I really enjoy how cool the room is and the fresh air. There has been a steady breeze for days and it makes the leaves in on the trees sound like we are close to the ocean.

We skipped watching any television this evening. Robyn had schoolwork to do as well as reading to finish. I read that book I mentioned a while back that was put up as a good example of second person point of view. I read three short stories and only the first of the three used second person. It was nice to just read for a little while though, even if it wasn’t the type of book I would normally pick up. This one was clearly written for the ladies. It’s called ‘Cowboys Are My Weakness.’

With the cool air streaming through the bedroom window, I grabbed my laptop and finally got to writing this blog. I am well behind on my word quota for the month and I need to make a concerted effort this next week. Not as bad as other months but, still not where I wanted to be by this time. Hopefully, working on my assignment will help me reduced the number of words owed!

Part of Robyn’s course work is to take care of a digital baby. She had to make a birth announcement tonight as part of the assignment. She made it a bit tongue and cheek, and I found out I was the father. I guess that’s a good thing?

Neither of us got to name our fake digital baby and that just makes it seem unrealistic to me.

I had to laugh at President Trump today as there was no one there to record sound for all his press briefings since he banned a couple of the big news outlets including CNN. Many of the other big outlets refused to show up in show of solidarity. The cameras were rolling and Trump was waffling on, but no one heard what he was saying. If there was ever a way to get the orange donkey to stop talking, this might be the way.

Of course, he will use this as an excuse to open his own state-run media. And then the truth will truly have died in the USA.

I spent the final moments of my evening helping Robyn, by proof reading her assignment and getting her google doc to conform to APA standards. She was using her ipad, so it makes it a little harder to find all the bells and whistles. We finally got it all done, but that took us to one AM and that was a bit longer that I intended on staying up this evening.

Good thing I am not going into the studio tomorrow!

Until tomorrow.