LOCKDOWN? MORE LIKE SLOWDOWN!!!!!

In the last couple of days there seems to have been a lot of talk about introducing a four-day week, as a sort of permanent thing, once the world gets back to normal. 

That, along with a universal basic income and more flexible, home-working, hours, seem to be getting real traction. It's almost as if the world - or much of it, anyway - has had a chance to take the foot off the gas, and is waking up to the fact that there are things in life more important, and more conducive to good health, than working as hard as you possibly can. Surprise: happy, relaxed, not-exhausted, people do better work, and are nicer to work with... 

It's something I've found it all too easy to forget over the years.

It's weird, really. At school I always did the bare minimum. If something didn't interest me, I didn't put any time or effort into it. Even the stuff I did enjoy doing - art, writing stories, making things - I rushed through, so I could do what I really, really enjoyed doing, which was playing with my action figures, or video games, or listening to music, or watching telly, or arsing around with mates. Or just arsing around by myself. 

I mean, when it came to my O Levels - I was the last year to do them, before they brought in GCSEs - I didn't even revise. I couldn't understand why my mates weren't allowed to come over and arse about. It's astonishing I came away with even the whopping four O Levels that I did. 

But maybe not a surprise given that two of them were creative (Art and Graphical Communication). Even then, my Art O Level - for which we were allowed two 6-hour exams to complete a piece, I did in one two-hour sitting. Unlike everyone else, I'd chosen to do my final piece using pastels, because I knew it'd be quicker. I still got a B. In your face, suckas!

About ten years or so ago I started going to art classes on a Saturday morning, just to prove to myself I could concentrate enough to actually finish a painting properly. I did three pieces, then left. I achieved what I set out to do,  and didn't like that the teacher told us not to talk while we were painting. 

When I left school at 15, I got a part-time job while going to college to study for my A Levels. Which I did for approximately four months, before dropping out to go full time in my job, which was designing graphics and animations for Ladbrokes Racing. And, unlike college, paid me money. 

Oddly, I really enjoyed having a job. I worked quite long hours - sometimes 12 hour days, once two whole weeks of that without a day off in-between - because there wasn't enough work for a full-time graphics person, so I doubled up as an 'inputter' - putting betting data into a computer. Then I got trained up to be the person who pressed the buttons that triggered what was on the screens in the betting shops. Then I moved over to the company's Oracle service, which is where I learned how to do teletext (working with the guy who I later got a job as Bamber Boozler's handler). 

I sort of found myself getting bored in that though. I'd spend most of my days doodling, or coming up with extra features - like running word searches on Oracle - that I found less tedious. I'd usually work a couple of Sundays a month, and I'd have the entire building pretty much to myself. I loved that; normally I'd bring in a film to watch on video while working.

I continued this sort of ADD-approach to work over my next couple of jobs - on the scoreboard at Wembley Stadium, and (yes) working at Teletext Ltd. In both those jobs, I'd normally complete whatever work I had to do in about a fifth of the time of my colleagues. It wasn't so much that I was faster per se; I just wasted less time with faff, or meetings, or tea breaks, or trying to look busy. I'd try to fill the extra time by coming up with more ideas, or new roles for myself (which is how both Turner the Worm and Digitiser began), to fill my days... and when there wasn't anywhere for those ideas to go I'd either arse around or bunk off early,

When I became self-employed, that all changed. I knew that my income was tied directly to how hard I worked. My dad also had an expectation that becoming freelance was all going to end horribly for me, and he'd make comments to that effect. I remember him turning up at my house one morning. looking down his nose at me when I answered the door, and sniffing: "Not working today then?". I reeled, given I'd stopped working solely so that I could answer the door to my dad, who'd popped down for a cup of tea. I think a switch flipped in my head, and I was determined to prove him - and others - wrong. 

Consequently, over the ensuing years, I worked harder and harder. My working hours were all over the place; on at least two occasions, I worked through the night. All of it was so that I could finish a job and move onto the next one. More work! Give me more work! I think, with hindsight, it might also have been a way to escape a pretty miserable domestic situation.

In the past decade, since I've been together with Sanja, I've become much better at sticking to sensible working hours. Admittedly, I start work early, from bed, but I rarely finish later than 5pm, and only when I'm on a deadline. There can't have been more than a handful of occasions when I've worked in the evening, and that was only because of some emergency or other.

I told myself I had a better work-life balance - I wanted to enjoy, and remember, being with her, and with my family, as much as I could. But in the past couple of years I found myself in the (admittedly fortunate) position of being lead writer on two kids' show simultaneously. While also doing Digi. While also - last year - putting on an ambitious live show. 

I've written before about how hard I hit a brick wall last year, and I swore I wouldn't do it again. That's a major part of why I'm focusing on YouTube over the website. Aside from the fact I have zero desire right now to write about video games - 26 years of it feels like enough for the moment - I was treating it like it was a job. It was something I told myself I *had* to do, but it was starting to debilitate me. It wasn't fulfilling, I felt I was repeating myself, and it was exhausting coming up with new ideas every day.

Fortunately, for the worst possible reasons, I've not had to find out whether I would've stuck to my guns, and not worked as hard this year. The decision was taken out of my hands. 

I'm working, but with one fewer show, and - because of the pandemic - none of the immediate deadlines I'd normally be working towards. Even the people I'm working with are more laidback about it all. The work, though as challenging in its own way as any writing can be, is just more enjoyable, because it's become a much smaller part of my life. I've allowed myself to complete a stage of a project - a draft or whatever - and then have a day of doing something I enjoy (typically, Digi or Found Footage stuff). Obviously, I feel guilty about it, because that relentless work ethic is hard-wired into me, but the longer this goes on... the less guilty I'm feeling. I'm taking my time with things more - Lost Footage is a labour of love, and I'm not rushing to get it out until I'm happy with it. I've learned - or learning, anyway - to slow down. 

So, there's a part of me that is actually going to miss lockdown. As terrible as all of this obviously is - and believe me, I've got my worries the same as anyone - I've really relished not having deadlines, and being able to work at a more sensible pace. I'm finding it easier to relax at weekends, and to enjoy the things I enjoy without thinking about work. 

It helps that I've got enough income coming in to keep a roof over our heads, of course - and not everyone is that lucky right now - but if there is a silver lining in all this, it's how it has reminded me that work isn't the same thing as having a life. And how easy it is to get the balance out of whack. It has reminded me that, ultimately, working for the sake or working isn't really that important to me. Play is much more where it's at, and the benefits that brings improves the work side.  

I really, really hope that the rest of the world learns these lessons, and ends up making a real change. We don't all need to run at a billion miles an hour. We miss all the small details along the way when we do that. 

Paul