mostly david ephgrave

Today was a day of pragmatically working through a list of admin that needed to be done to essentially clear the decks for me to get on with some writing. I’ll often check things off a list when I have a few deadlines as it helps concentrate my mind on what needs doing, as well as giving me the sense that things are moving forward. Today I was particularly insistent and stuck to the list without deviation, even if it felt like, as ever, I was drowning in a sea of everything but the creative side of what I need to do; I knew that ultimately I’d thank myself for keeping at it, and I genuinely feel doing so will stand me in good stead for the next few weeks. Much of what I did today makes for dull reading, but it was still worth it. I pulled together a blurb for the back of our St Albans Mostly Comedy flyer, wrote a press release for the middle of our three dates there, finished the artwork for my Bath Comedy Festival dates - as well as ordering it - ...

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 ...