It never lasts long, but following a fit of cleaning, clearing and moving-stuff-around frenzy at the weekend I managed to create myself a fresh, light and new space to work in my study at home.
Flexible working is a wonderful thing, but I do need my own space to shut myself away from everything else and get productive. Every now and then I need to refresh it to clear my desk and my head.
Rather pleased with the result.
When I started this blog it was about trying to keep on top of things, those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Shakespeare told us about. It was about charting my journey up to and beyond transplant and all the weird emotions and exciting opportunities it brought.
Now, though, I want it to be more than that. Partially because I’m now blessed to have a life that’s much like anyone’s: I have a full-time job making a real difference in people’s lives, I have a loving wife and a beautiful home to come home to every night, I have everything I ever wanted from my extra time in life, bar a few of the more outrageous and/or longer-term goals I came up with beforehand.
So I want this blog to be about more than just me and my journey, but to stay true to the principals under which it began.
This year, I’m going to set out to make Smile Through It a place where you can come for inspiration and education of all kinds. (Except the bad kind of ‘education’ that just made you suddenly wonder if you want to come back here at all, I won’t be doing any of that stuff.)
I want this blog to become a place where you can discover and share stories of living life in the most honest way possible. That doesn’t mean people going on crazy adventures: an honest life is simply about living authentically to yourself. And if that’s a little too ‘new age hippy’ for you, think of it like this: happiness comes from living the life that fits you, nothing more.
This, then, will be a period of adjustment for me as I work out how best to make all of this happen, but it will involve lots more storytelling (because I’ve not done nearly enough of that on here in recent months), it will involve a lot more of other people’s stories, and it will hopefully involve more than just reading.
I’d love to hear from you to know what you get out of this site and what you’d like to get from it. What posts really inspire you and make you want to do things, what bores you to tears and never makes you want to come back, and what would you love to see more of from me?
Please get in touch however you’d like: you can email me (or use the contact form on my personal website to be sure of passing spam filters), you can Tweet me, you can even find me on that weird and lonely place they call Google plus (however amazed you may be that it’s still going).
Smile Through It is a philosophy on life that I’ve let slip in recent weeks and months, and it’s time we got back to what mattered. So here’s to a 2015 full of growth and development for me, for this blog and, hopefully, for you, too.
This time in 4 weeks I should hopefully be nestled in my bed starting two days of recovery from the 3 Peaks Challenge and right now I’m hopeful, a little fearful and very, very tired.
Training has stepped up a notch, there’s all kinds of logistics to organise, a team-meeting with 5 of apparently the busiest people on the planet and I’ve still got to fit in work, quality time with K and a trip to Durham for a fundraiser for this years’ CF Week in aid of the CF Trust, a cause you’ll all know is close to my heart.
Today, though, that all blurred into fairly frank insignificance following Tor’s latest post on her blog following her seventh false alarm call for transplant. I’ve written before on here about my false alarms, but also about how Tor inspires me to want to do better, to push myself harder and to achieve everything I can while I’m able.
One quote from her post today stood out for me, when she talks about her fears for the future, post-transplant:
I [am] worried that I … could never live a life that was enough to honour my donor.
This is a fear that lives with me every day. It’s not a fear that overwhelms me, but rather motivates me and gives me my ultimate drive to succeed, whether personally, in business or my personal life.
If my donor is looking down on me now, I want them to be proud of me. I want them to feel that they made the right decision in letting me live after they died. I want them to know just how much I value the gift I’ve been given and how I live each and every day in their honour, under their guidance and with their presence always around me.
That’s why I’ve started chasing the dream of the 3 Peaks and it’s why I want to keep pushing myself to do more.
My body decides that 6.30am is a good wake up time this morning and, as the room is freezing and the wind is rattling the door, any chance I have of convincing myself to go back to sleep is thrown out of the window, so I get up, close the window over lest the same fate should befall the lovely K1 and head downstairs.
I make myself a cup of tea with the penultimate tea-bag in the house2 and sit down to catch up on emails, news and blogs from the last two days since I’ve been out of the office for most of them. I promptly let my tea go cold and debate whether to walk to the shops but a) it looks freezing outside and b) I’m digging too far into the news blogs to leave my laptop.
By late-morning I’m all caught up on everything I’ve missed and have worked my way through two scripts that were in my To Read pile. I fire off an email of feedback to the writer/director of one of them, but promise myself a second read of the other, since it’s being pitched to me as a possible new producing project and I think it needs a more careful evaluation.3.
K eventually rouses herself and announces (shock of all shocks) that she actually had a good night’s sleep and feels rested and happy – not a common thing for K of a morning. She also informs me that we’re popping next door at 2 to give Wee C4 his delayed Christmas present that various events colluded to prevent us handing over pre-Christmas (or even pre-New Year).
Back from that we take a stroll down the road and pick up some tea and milk, then K hits the sofa to dig into some statistics homework while I clean up the kitchen, including mopping the floor from Thursday’s jumping cider incident (it’s been a bit sticky since).
That done, I head upstairs and have a chill out in the bath, followed by some relaxation, then make a few phone calls that I needed to catch up on, including chasing up a commission that came my way yesterday.
Phone calls finished, I try (and fail) to wrap my head around K’s statistics stuff to see if I can be of any help, but drawing a blank on that I instead fall back on my dinner-cooking talents and rustle up some griddled pork and accompaniments.
After dinner, K hits the sofa again and I head up to the office to check messages and update the blog. When K’s brain has exhausted itself and her mind is a whirl of statistical mess we play a quick game of Bananagrams before heading to the movie room and throwing in the original BBC STATE OF PLAY series, which K’s never seen. I realise I’ve forgotten just how much I love this show as we get through two hour-long eps back-to-back and could quite easily have stayed up and got through all 6 in one straight marathon, but I’m keen for K to rest up before Uni starts on Monday, so I drag us both to bed for sleep.
The alarm wakes me at 8am, which is the latest I’ve been up all week (I figure I deserve it). I get out of bed, shower and rouse K so we can make our 9.35 train to London.
We get in to Town and K heads off to Angel to Uni, where she’s meeting her study group to polish up their joint project while I head down to Waterloo to meet up with HC, a filmmaker friend of mine. It’s good to finally see her as we live a life of constant “we must meet up” messages and rarely manage to find time that both of us are free to actually do it.
We pick each other’s brains about various work-related thing, as well as chatting about new projects we have on and our hopes and plans for 2011. The hour-and-change we spend in a lovely little South Bank café1 passes way too quickly before I’m back on a tube and headed North to Angel.
I meet K to accompany her to a meeting with her Uni that she’s organised to try to sort out arrangements for her placement this term, which goes very positively and we’re in and out inside half-an-hour.
K smuggles me in to the uni library using one of her study-mates passes and I stick my head into their room to say hello to the group and thank Sc for her card. They carry on working and I sit in the main library study area and battle (unsuccessfully) with the WiFi before giving up and settle into preparing a business plan for the new project I’m working on with CR that doesn’t require ‘net accesses.
While I’m working I get an email from a Twitter contact who was involved in Danny Lacey’s LOVE LIKE HERS offering me a Line/Co-Producer role on her new short. As it’s on my Blackberry, I can’t read the script, but I file it away to come back to later once I’ve got chance to access the ‘net and read it.
I also get an email from THE PRODUCTION OFFICE commissioning me for 12 new eps of THE LOWDOWN for them this year, which is a really nice boost. I’ve had great feedback in the past on the videos I’ve done for the show and it’s always flattering to be asked to come back and do it again. I accept without hesitation.
When K wraps up her study group, I pack up my things and we stroll back up to Angel and grab the tube to St Pancras, where we’ve just missed a train home. There’s one every half-hour, though, so it’s not the end of the world and we hit Foyles bookshop to kill some time, with me wading through the business section as a bit of market research.
We hop the train and ride some, K zoning out with tiredness while I read an eBook on her iPad for the first time. I’m impressed at how nice it is to read on it, as I’ve only used it for games and “useful” apps before. The workflow for reading PDFs is a little fiddly, but once they’re on there, it’s great.
We get home and swing by KFC for K and I whip myself up some chicken mayo sandwiches from the leftovers in the fridge2. We watch some SIMPSONS while we eat, then head up to the movie room and the PS3 to stream the first ep of FAMOUS AND FEARLESS that we missed on Monday, which we jump through the key moments of before coming back down to tonight’s Sky+’d final. It’s such an odd show – potential to be very, very good, but the live studio format necessitates quite a lot of padding. That said, if it weren’t live it wouldn’t have the same edge to it, so it’s a bit of a conundrum for the producers. It’s great to see Chris Evans doing good TV again, though – I miss TFI FRIDAY.
It’s late once F&F is over (well done Charley Boorman) and we take ourselves off to bed where I read for all of 10 minutes before conking out.
I say it begins, but for most of the backstage staff, it already has – weeks and weeks ago. But all too often in theatre the start of a production is marked by the start of the rehearsal process.
Like the dutiful techies we all are, foregoing our reading week to be here for the show, we trudged our way to the 4th floor of the main LIPA building and into the room which will house rehearsals for Wind in the Willows for the next 4 weeks before we hit the Paul McCartney Auditorium for a week of technical and dress rehearsals to realise the show everyone’s had in their heads since the first week of term.
Today was also the first time I’d had to see the model box, the small, scale model of what will eventually be realised on stage. I know this is a big show, but seeing the model box today really rammed home just how HUGE the whole thing is. The monstrous set takes up the entire PMA stage and a little bit more besides and there is an incredible amount of work for us lowly ASMs to do in keeping the show running with all the appropriate scene changes as the show goes on.
It’s both extraordinarily exciting and not a little bit daunting. I’ve never been an ASM before – I’ve stage managed, I’ve production managed, but so much of the success of the performance itself rests on the ASMs getting their cues right. Because an ASM missing a cue in the middle of a show is likely to cause one of the most obvious slip ups in the theatre. It’s possible to miss lighting and sound cues without people really being aware, but if the setting and props aren’t in the right place when they’re needed, the actors can look like a right bunch of muppets.
Am looking forward to it, though. I think it’s going to be a great show and a fun show to work on. So here’s to four weeks of running around Liverpool like a loony getting everything sorted and a final week of running around LIPA like a loony getting everything sorteder.
Deep breath!
Sorry for the delay in posting about the awesome Save Jess-tival on Friday night, but it’s been a hectic and exhausting last few days.
Friday was amazing. A stellar line up including headline turns from Natalie Imbruglia and Ed Byrne as well as the fabulous Yeah Yous and Laughter for Life favourite Glenn Wool who unfortunately suffered from some sound issues meaning his set didn’t go down as well as it might have.
The revelation of the day for me, though, was the two singer/songwriters I’d not heard perform before. Susanna Cork is undoubtedly on the verge of great things – she has an amazing voice that’s beyond anything I expected and is a supreme talent. I can’t wait to pick up her album when it comes out and believe me, I’ll be plugging it like mad on here as soon as it streets.
The other half of the amazement came at first-timer Mr Robin K. Already on his Twitter feed he’s been hailed as the next Tim Minchin and on this performance you can clearly see why. Witty, emotional and often hilarious songs coupled with a little stand up in between made for a truly surprise package. Considering this is his first gig and he’s only been writing since the summer, this guy is undoubtedly going just as far as Susanna, albeit in a slightly different direction. You can check him out here.
The day itself was utterly exhausting. I was up at 8.30am to be at the venue for 10am and I worked through with various members of my team to 1am without a break. The crew who came in with their lighting rig and sound systems were brilliant, working far beyond their working time regs should have allowed them and never complaining or kicking up a fuss, just quietly getting things together to make it all happen.
Most importantly of all, our Jess was there throughout and thoroughly enjoyed it by all accounts, even allowing for the minor hiccup in the cab on the way home.
It was great to be working on something like this again, though, as something along the lines of a production/stage manager. It’s been a lot of work over the last 2 weeks, but really worth it for the buzz of pulling off such a massive gig with such big names.
Now it’s onwards and upwards, although downwards on the stage management ladder to ASM Wind in the Willows, which goes into rehearsals next Monday and promises to be challenging on lots of different levels. Can’t wait.
After the whirlwind Thursday last week where everything fell into place for my next 3 years of life in a matter of hours, the repercussions hit hard over the weekend.
First off, I wanted to make sure I’d spoken to all the people that matter before plastering the news all over my Facebook and Twitter pages, so I spent a couple of days chasing down all the people who would be directly affected by the decision, including TJ, my wonderful boss at the Grove who helped me enormously by giving me my first job post-transplant with the Youth Theatre there. I also spoke to PC, the YT leader at the Grove, and to a couple of my friends, including a very close friend whose wedding I will now miss as it falls in the middle of my first week at LIPA.
I think what shocked me the most was that not one person sounded let down, disappointed or upset by it at all. The response was uniformly and heart-warmingly brilliant – everyone was so excited that I’ve finally got this chance. As soon as I’d announced it on Facebook I was inundated with messages of support and congratulations and people wishing me well.
Right now I’m more excited than a child on the first Christmas Eve they fully understand the implications of the following day – I’m absolutely loopy about it all. I do, however, have an awful lot to do.
In our wisdom, K and I decided at the start of summer that we needed a really special holiday away to celebrate our new freedom, so we booked ourselves 2 weeks in Hawaii – a truly dream holiday to spend time together, chilling out and relaxing.
Neither of us can wait, but we leave on the 1st September and return on the afternoon of the 13th. I then have to be at LIPA for 9am on the 14th, which is to say the least a bit of a rush. My first day is now no doubt going to pass in a haze of jet-lag and exhaustion, I just hope I can manage to hold some form of conversation with the people I meet.
What it also means is that I have to have everything sorted for uni by the time we leave for Hawaii giving me precisely 12 days from the day I was accepted to square everything from accommodation to finance away. That’s now just 8 days. When we went on holiday to the Caribbean when I was younger, we used to be told numerous times how they consider that “rushing is what mats are made from”. This week I’ve discovered and will no doubt have drummed into me that the same rule does not apply to the UK – and especially not to country-fleeing uni students.
Just North of London today I met with our military adviser about the impending shoot. They’re 100% behind us and are providing all manner of costume, equipment and research material, not to mention (fingers crossed) our main location, which is both awesomely unbelievable and totally unprecedented for a short film.
We’re waiting on one final go/no go from their ranges to see if we can shoot on the dates we want to, which should come through to us on Monday. All being well it’ll then be all systems GO! for an amazing, life-changing movie for everyone involved.
And don’t forget, YOU can be involved, too! All you have to do is click the link and you can become a Producer on Remembrance by helping us hit our budget target in time for the shoot. Every penny counts, so even if you can’t meet the pre-set amounts, hit the “donate” button and chip in what you can. And if you happen to be flush right now, there’s nothing to stop larger donations, either. And you get to see your name in the credits, too – and you get a free copy of the film when it’s all done.
This is all ramping up to be quite exciting just now and the pedal is about to hit the metal – come along for the ride!