Ten Thousand Horrors
So my week is delayed a few days. This is exactly how it feels – as if the days are slip-sliding over each other in their keenness to escape my grasp. If it should suddenly turn out to be August I’d not be surprised. Still at least it’s deposited us in a sunny chunk of Spring.
I think I need to make some difficult decisions about how I’m using my time, what little there is of it. I’ve a habit of burning my candles from both ends and setting light to the middle to get a bit of extra light, and it’s just not sustainable. I don’t know how to decide what must give way though.
I’ve been giving insufficient time to writing, which is the activity I most regret missing. I don’t feel that my writing serves any purpose other than a pure personal creative outlet which is given extraordinary reward when others do happen to enjoy it. Closely linked to writing is contributing to Flash Pulp’s Flash Cast – being included is a special and deep delight. I would like very much to record more and contribute on a more regular basis. It probably doesn’t help that I’m about three weeks behind in just listening…
Writing competes with improvisation, naturally for time, since improv requires more additional ‘stuff’- people, place (and travel), organisation, expectation, planning, commitment… It’s far more than just turning up and performing, which ultimately is the part I really enjoy. That, and the close friendships that have developed alongside improv.
Obviously there’s Lego too… But that is a mind-cleaning relaxation in which I can give over my brain and sense of time to the glorious schinkling of bricks (I wonder if I can trademark that onomatopoeia?). It’s the closest I’ve come to meditation, since I abhor stillness and inactivity; typically I also crave that complete absence of action. I find it all rather confusing.
And then there’s the tedious necessity of pissing most of the waking life away doing spreadsheet wizardry (the involving and problem solving aspects of which I enjoy a great deal, the appalling communication and outright idiocy less so). How does anyone juggle this? At least I don’t have children – that vacuum of time, money and energy is blissfully absent.
‘Slids, what to do?
Crap – I forgot about reading… when does that get fitted in? Can’t live without reading.
Other Distractions
Showtime and funtime. We hit up the stage at The Glee Club on Friday with the smallest team we’ve fielded for a while, due to illness and other arrangements. Spectacularly weird and quite patiently developed improv ensued. I enjoyed it a lot.
On Saturday, we finally got round to a Lovecraft and whiskey afternoon. A delightfully warm and sunny afternoon tarnished with the scent of insanity. Martin laid out the complex Arkham Horror for us to move round, falling into madness and battle all the while. It’s great! I haven’t played a more complicated game than Lego Creationary for about a decade, and I could feel my brain struggling to grasp the basic (eldritch) arithmetic required.
Nicely we all drew female characters (normally absent in Lovecraft of course), for my part I was Carolyn Fern, psychopathic murderer. I chose to attack everything that moved, with no small measure of success. We were eventually annihilated by Yigg after triggering the apocalypse.
We sweetened the unnameable horrors with Crown Royal (it comes in a bag!) and Peat’s Beast; the first’s a maple syrup-tasting blended whiskey, the second has been lost in a peat bog but come out a very delicate pale, yet fearsomely peaty flavour. Marvellous.
♥Last Week’s Scribbles
This week, Monday 24th March 2014 – modern art or modern toss?
Runes: Martin Findell – an excellent, pretty book by a good friend. Buy!
Lego Blog: A Lego Haul – continuing to document the Lego frenzy, with a trip to the Lego Store.
Events and Excitement
Thursday 10th April 2014
Gorilla Burger – Improv Comedy Carnage
Jam show – a chance for anyone to get on stage and have a go at improv games and scenes for the first time, or the fiftieth!
The Corner
8 Stoney Street
(off Broad Street)
Nottingham
7.30pm – £4
Bring Your Own Drinks
https://www.facebook.com/events/219306464925221/
