mostly david ephgrave

I long to establish a clear working structure to my day, so I can keep track of my achievements instead of feeling the goalposts are constantly moving, and avoid feeling chased, panicked or back-footed by the outside influences that inevitably get in my way. This is one of the downsides to self-employment, particularly when the majority of your work is self-generated; it's hard enough to give yourself time to prepare for an acting (or actor / muso) job for an outside company, let alone when you’re working for yourself. I have a musician friend for whom function gigs provide the majority of his income, yet his partner often forgets the gig is just a fraction of the job as he also needs to learn the music. While she understands this work needs to be done in principle, as far as she's concerned, if he’s at home then he’s available; consequently the majority of his preparatory time is spent doing odd-jobs around the house. I know the feeling, though for a completely differ...

One of the downsides to being self-employed is it can be hard to make a distinction between when you’re working and when you’re not, and have other people understand that just because your day-to-day life may not be as obviously structured as someone with a nine-to-five job, that doesn’t mean you still don’t have to spend a large portion of your day doing what needs to be done, uninterrupted. In recent years, I’ve made more of a concerted effort to have a clear stage in the day when I essentially clock off, mainly to alleviate stress and to give myself some downtime. I’ve got better at it, but only to a point. Today, I haven’t been successful, what with chasing stuff for Edinburgh on-and-off all day, trying to finalise the few remaining Spring Mostly Comedy line-ups (which included a phone conversation with an agent past 6:00pm to confirm a big act for one of our St Albans dates, and then submitting the event to go on sale literally a few minutes ago) and ...