My brain hates me

I have decided my brain hates me because it gives me great ideas at really inappropriate times. For instance I'll be stuck in a really boring meeting and it will suddenly strike me that this would make excellent blog fodder. This might seem fine to you but I get so absorbed in thinking about how I'm going to call the presenter "Mr Jowly-Head" and write about how he tried to kill us with a 72 slide presentation that I completely lose track of what's going on around me.

This actually seems like a pretty good option to me as well. Right up to the point Mr Jowly-Head asks me for a response. When I stare at him in silence, he thinks it's because I wasn't paying attention. He's only partly right.

I'm silent because I'm desperately fighting down the urge to say: "I'm sorry, I shut down my higher brain functions as a protective measure in case your freakish levels of boringness were infectious."

Last night my brain was messing with me again by giving me a good idea about half an hour before I wanted to go to bed. I'd been playing with my kids all weekend and hadn't made any new videos. This always makes me feel vaguely guilty. I know this is stupid because nobody except me compels me to make these damn videos. But it still feels like I'm being lazy. It worries me far more than writing blog posts while I'm at work.

The reason this good idea was a problem is it was going to take me at least four hours to make and edit the video. It was a good idea but it was a complicated one. I had an inspiration to do a video response to a featured video on YouTube. The video posed some deep philosophical questions. In my response I was going to be a smartarse. There's a bit of time pressure if you're trying to score some viewers by responding to a featured video (as was my intention) - most of the viewers see a featured video in the first 24-48 hours.

I shot the video quickly and spent about half an hour on the editing. This got me about 1/10th of the way through the editing required. I had this stupid idea of a disembodied, otherwordly voice talking to me. Once I get these ideas in my head I get a bit obsessed will following through on them. I did the off-screen voice as well as the on screen performance and it was taking a while to get the timing right.

As recently as six months ago, my obsession probably would have taken over. I would have kept going with this video until it was done. No matter how long that took. Fortunately, my doctor recently prescribed a regimen of "calm the fuck down and get some perspective" for me. (NB I'm not actually on any prescription - this is just a figure of speech)

So I saved my progress and went to bed. Which turned out to be a doubly good thing to do. Since waking up I've thought of a much easier way to do the video. So you may even see it soon. Despite the fact that it will be completed a bit late to cash in on the featured video. But at least I have a bit more balance in my life these days.