It’s 1999, or thereabouts. I’m sitting in a friend’s living room. We’re watching a recording of something from BBC Two. Probably TMWRNJ1 or the like. We’re both huge comedy fans.
Unfortunately, I make an error. Being a comedy fan is fine. But foolishly, I try to have a conversation about the nice BBC Two ident in front of the programme. I like that kind of thing, you see. I mean, at that point, I didn’t even know the phrase “TV presentation”, let alone “TV presentation fan”. This was long before I knew there were other people like me. I just knew it was something I was interested in.
I shortly wished this was not the case.
I can’t even remember the word used towards me. Sad? Boring? Whatever it was, it was negative, and I was an idiot. I mean, I was used to hearing this stuff right through school, but I thought I might escape from it when I went to college. Seemingly not. A swift stab in the heart, job done.
I feebly protest, but can’t get the words out. We get on with watching telly. I brood.
* * *
It’s 2015, or thereabouts. I’m sitting in a certain TV channel’s control room – now on the other side of the television. I’m busy tweaking that evening’s schedule, for imminent transmission over the next few hours. And that involves actually watching a condensed version of that evening’s material.
A ‘2’ in the guise of a toy car glides across the screen. Ah, I know what to do. To make this look good, the 2 figure needs to exit cleanly off the side of the screen before going into the programme. That happens at precisely 15 seconds in. But I’m doing a 10 frame visual mix into the programme, so that means this ident needs to run for 14″15f in order to look good. Hang on…
*clickity click*
Perfect.
* * *
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE®! Choose from 2 possible endings:
1) Don’t let anybody ever tell you the silly shit you’re interested in doesn’t matter. You might find it immensely useful years down the line. People might even end up paying you money to be good at it.
The kind of person who wanders into a conversation, sees that the obvious point hasn’t been made yet… and so goes ahead and makes it. The reason the obvious point hasn’t been made is because it’s already been made endlessly, and people are trying to talk about something from a different angle. You do not need to fill in the “gap”.
And don’t be the kind of person who sees somebody dancing around a point… and just blunders in and outright states the point instead. Missing the fact that it was the dance itself which was entertaining. Reading between the lines can sometimes be half the joy.
Conversations – on Twitter, or indeed anywhere – are not an exam paper. You do not need to prove your knowledge to get points, nor does a conversation have to cover EVERY SINGLE THING about a topic in order to be worthwhile. And for the love of all that is good in the world, please allow people to approach a topic with a little playfulness sometimes.
Fun, interesting stuff happens in the shadows. Dragging every conversation back to “the main point”, or stamping down on anything slightly whimsical at every turn in favour of the bald facts straightforwardly presented, is really, really tedious.
Please don’t be That Person. We don’t build a better world by being boring.
On a short trip to Amsterdam last weekend, I visited Anne Frank House, somewhere which feels depressingly relevant to 2018 in a way I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. And while I am not a religious man, when I actually walked into the Secret Annex, where Anne hid with seven others for two years… it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to stepping into a sacred place.
I cannot hope to get across my feelings as I walked round the annex. But I want to just mention one thing that I found really striking.
As you enter the museum, you pick up an audio guide from the wall. You can either use your own headphones, or just stick the guide next to your ear. As you cross into the various rooms – and up some startlingly steep staircases – you scan the number on the wall, and off you go.
Except when you reach the Secret Annex. The entrance stands before you, hidden by a movable bookcase. And your audio guide calmly informs you… no, there won’t be any entries while you’re in the annex. You’re on your own. They’ll pick up again once you leave.
This does a number of things. It stops the perhaps slightly tasteless sight of a load of tourists walking around the annex with an audio guide jammed up against their ear. More importantly, it makes each visitor to stop, and actually experience the annex first hand, rather than zone out listening to someone else talk about it. It forces you to actually be there, in other words.
But subtly, it does something else. It says: this part of the museum is different. That it’s all very well walking around the rest of the house, half looking around, half listening to the audio guide… but the annex is special. This is not just another random part of a random museum, where data flaps unbidden into your mind.
Earlier this year, a well-known web rascal died.1 I didn’t know him. I didn’t even really like his writing, despite it being much lauded; I found it a little pretentious, and prone to sweeping judgements. I have no reason to write about him. His death is none of my business.
Except: I can’t stop thinking about it.
It’s gone, you see. All his writing: he deleted it from the web years ago. So when his death was announced, and people across the world went to look for their favourite posts to remember him by… they weren’t there. None of his sites were still online. Sure, people went scrabbling around on the Wayback Machine to find his stuff again, but however amazing the Wayback Machine is, it isn’t perfect at preserving sites. For a guy who cared so much about how the web looked and felt, and gave attention to every detail, to see people being forced to link to the equivalent of a dodgy photocopy was… well, a shame.
Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not criticising him, and his specific situation. (There are particular reasons for this which are not necessary to go into here.) This isn’t really about him, in fact.
It just made me think. When you die, unless you were a right nasty piece of work, people will want to remember you. In years past, aside from the famous, that might only have been family and friends, gathering together and flicking through a book of photos. These days, if you live your life online, you might have people who read your nonsense who live halfway across the world. For that nonsense to just disappear into the ether means that when it comes for people to mourn… they can’t remember you in the way they would have liked. It’s the equivalent of chucking that book of photos onto a big bonfire.
When I die, I want to leave as much of myself behind as possible. Eventually, I’ll fade, as everything does. But I don’t want that to happen before it has to.
I don’t need to name him; who he was is irrelevant to this post. ↩
Back in September 2016 – two months before Donald Trump won the election – I read a Twitter exchange. A Twitter exchange involving someone who worked on one of my favourite TV shows at the time, and was well known in the fan community for giving up their time to talk to fans.
A Twitter exchange which I can’t stop thinking about.
Somebody had compared Donald Trump to Hitler, you see. And this person didn’t like it. Oh, they didn’t support Trump, of course. In fact, they didn’t even object to his politics being described as Fascism. But they thought Trump being compared to Hitler was beyond the pale.
“I don’t think the US will allow genocide to happen again.”
Moreover:
“I just don’t like how it downplays the actual genocide that happened.”
And when it was pointed out to them that “It can’t happen here” is, in fact, one of the worst ways to downplay the Holocaust?
“I guess I just have a little more faith in your country than you do. /end”
Of course, in the subsequent two years, there have been endless debates about comparing Trump to Hitler. Here’s the pithiest, from someone who knows. But I keep coming back to the above conversation, because it was when it was really brought home to me how otherwise good people can’t believe when terrible things are happening, before it’s too late. Not people telling me about it, in long, ponderous columns. But seeing it happen before my eyes, with someone I liked.
Recently, I took a holiday across Europe from the UK to Sicily, taking in Rome along the way. Hey, anyone want to see my holiday pictures? Here’s the Colosseum in Rome:
We spent a lot of time on the train on this holiday, and part of our journey involved an 11 hour train ride from Rome to Sicily. And as excited as I was to be travelling along the Italian coast, something else was at the back of my mind. I had a laptop. I had a power socket. And I had 11 hours to fill. I could walk onto that train with my mind totally empty, and walk off it with a whole article written on something cool.
And I’m sure that would be perfect for some people. The kind of people who conjure up magical words purely out of their magical brain, and need nothing else.
Me? It really made me realise how pretty much everything I write builds on the work of others.1 When I’m writing, I need constant access to articles online, to my DVD shelf, to my 40″ television, to books I suddenly discover I have to buy, and to help from random people on Twitter. Travelling with just a laptop and a brain – and spotty data coverage – isn’t enough for me to be able to do anything useful.
The romantic ideal didn’t work.
* * *
And yet, wandering around Syracuse, full of calamari, something strange started to happen. Looking out at the beautiful sea, an idea popped into my head for an article. And another one. And another one. And another one. My head felt full of ideas for the first time in ages.
None of those article ideas were about the beauty of Sicily, of course. It was all about old sitcoms, as per. But they were ideas, some of them vaguely swirling around my head for ages, which suddenly popped into sharp focus.
It’s standard advice, of course. Go somewhere new, change your surroundings, and your brain will find it easier to do things. But that’s the thing: it’s such standard advice, it’s sometimes easy just to ignore it. But it really did work for me. If you have trouble getting your brain in gear, going somewhere else really is a useful thing to do. A cliche it may be, but it did me the absolute world of good.
For the record: yes, I’ve done my research and listened to the podcast, rather than trusting a quote picked out by someone else. That is indeed exactly what someone on the podcast says: specifically, Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates.
OK, I admit, I’m immediately suspicious of one-sentence platitudes on how to live your life. But the above really gave me pause. Sure, there are things I look back on where I think yeah, I was bloody stupid. (Let’s be generous and assume that by “stupid”, Ray simply means “had more to learn”.) I work in playout on a major TV channel; I like to think I can deal with channel breakdowns better now than at any point in my career.1 I know I’m a more considerate person when it comes to relationships than I used to be. And I used to be the kind of person who sneered a little at trigger warnings, privately if not publicly; I’m not perfect these days by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m certainly more aware of social issues now than I ever used to be.
But I think back to how I used to be in other areas… and I don’t feel I was stupid at all. In fact, I was better at some things than I am now. When I was writing news stories for Ganymede & Titan daily, I got a knack for how to write an entertaining news story very quickly, which I have all but completely lost now. Sure, maybe I’m happier these days writing more longform, personal stuff: but there are times when having the old skill would be extremely useful, and I just can’t do it like I used to be able to.
Oh, and I used to be able to write headlines.
Or take my current job. Am I happier directing a TV channel now than I was working as a shelf stacker in a cash and carry? Of course I am. But I’d be a fool not to recognise there were certain things about that job which made me a better person in some ways than now, if only because I was fitter and more physically dextrous. Sitting on your arse for 12 hours a day is not the way to improve yourself in this regard. Being on your feet all day scooting up and down the aisles lifting heavy boxes is, no matter how little I enjoyed it.
We are all complex creatures. Yes, we learn and improve on some things as we get older… but we lose things, too. I don’t look back on my older self and see just stupidity; I see parts of myself which I have lost, and wish that I hadn’t. The hours I used to spend swimming or cycling; my interest in programming; the articles I used to write which I’d never dare to now because of self-doubt. As we choose to improve some areas of our lives, other things fall by the wayside. That’s only natural: but to pretend no matter how hard we try that our lives consist of constant improvement is a fallacy.
If you only look back on yourself and see stupidity, maybe you’re just not giving your past self a fair chance. And more importantly: maybe you’re not giving your future self a chance to put at least some of that right.
Those who work in the industry will know that now I’ve been foolish enough to say this, I fully expect to be tested on it shortly. ↩
Sometimes, you read something which manages to encompass a philosophy so different to your own, in just a few short words.
Take, for instance, this post on kottke.org. Not the image, by Jessica Hische, but the short blogpost underneath by Jason Kottke himself.
“It’s been a loooong couple of days / weeks / months / years / decades / centuries / millennia, hasn’t it? Sometimes you have to laugh, just a little. And then back to it. Thanks for the chuckle, Jessica Hische.”
The idea of laughter as a break, before you get back to the real stuff. I just can’t get my head around that.
Laughter is the real stuff, for me. As much as possible. It’s who I am, it’s what I think life is. Whether that’s sitting in front of Steptoe and Son, or whether it’s lying in a hospital bed in intensive care, convulsing with laughter because of something someone said, in pain for every single second of it.
Personally speaking, “and then back to it” reads like the most depressing five words in the world.
I sit here on holiday in France: a trip made possible by technology. I made that trip with my girlfriend: we met 15 years ago, through technology. I’m currently writing on a laptop, able to share my thoughts at the touch of a button: something made possible through technology. And I’m here at all because I survived pneumonia last year: an infection which nearly killed me, and which I only got through because of, y’know, technology.
Technology is what we make it, and we can make it for good or evil. And of course, there needs to be far more focus on making it work for good right now, which is something Silicon Valley needs a sharp lesson on. But to say “technology is generally bad for us” avoids the very issues which we need to focus on, just as much as the tech bros who laud technology over everything. Both are distasteful.
All of which I thought was obvious, and I’d never bother writing about this usually. But I thought the owner of a podcast network famous for many, many tech-orientated shows saying the above was especially perverse, and worth pointing out. Where wan platitudes replace considered thought we all lose, whatever those platitudes are. And much like this mistake from Jeffrey Zeldman, people look up to Dan and his like for an example.
Still, if I was making shows about something I thought was bad for us, I’d run as far away from them as possible. Through some flowers, perhaps, holding the hand of someone I loved. But don’t trip up and smash your head on a rock. You might need some of that damn technology to fix that.
“Which brings us to: Screw With Your Sleep. The Wraith of Insomnia will be your co-pilot on the Sea of Sadness. Her mere presence is unpleasant, but she also helps confuse the productive part of your brain which might look to navigate you toward the Islands of Happiness on the horizon. (More on that later.) A regular sleep cycle is a fragile thing and takes at least three days to establish. Be sure then to vary your bedtime, by several hours twice at week – at least. Even better: vary your wake time. Sleep in late, preferably very late, some – but not all – days. And tell yourself you are making up for sleep to feel like you’re doing something healthy, even though you feel terrible when you wake up early, and when you wake up late. Irregular sleep is another of the sea’s accelerating currents.
The more you vary your sleep, the harder regular sleep becomes, which makes your sleep more variable. To never sleep or wake at the same time naturally is the goal.”
Yeah, that does sound bad, and I get your clever reversal. Now, let me take you through my weekend.
In fact, I’ve actually been off work since Monday, which has been lovely. But just at the time when a lot of people are thinking about what to do with their days off, I’m gearing up for four 12-hour shifts at work. 7:30pm – 7:30am: going into work this Friday night, and coming off shift Tuesday morning.
So, what will I be doing? I work as a Playout Director, so when I get in I’ll take over transmitting TV shows for your primetime. I’ll do a bit of sport in the early hours, and then I’ll get to prepping tomorrow’s schedules. If there’s a problem with a programme that’s transmitting tomorrow afternoon, best we find out about it at 3am when there’s a chance of fixing it, instead of discoving the issue half an hour before broadcast.
In my job, I do many different kinds of awkward hours. Depending on my shift, I can end up starting work early in the morning, at lunchtime, mid-afternoon, or in the evening. In fact, the only time I’m never going to arrive at work is bang on 9am. Now, don’t get me wrong: I love my job. There are certain health risks associated with it, and planning your life can be fraught at times. But those are just things I have to deal with.
What I find frustrating though, is when people talk about the issues with irregular sleep patterns as though all anybody has to do is just “go to bed at a sensible time, man”. For me, that is just impossible. And let’s not forget: somebody has to do all these jobs, and many of those jobs are rather more important than mine. Somebody needs to make sure you have running water and electricity at all hours. Somebody needs to come and put out fires. And somebody – like my sister, a nurse – has to be around to pump you full of morphine and save your life.1 Regular sleep patterns are literally impossible for a great many people in the service industry. And I’m sick of being scolded and/or patronised for a job which if I didn’t do, somebody else would have to do instead.
Maybe it’s unfair to pin all of this on one seven minute video. This is a cumulation of things, and it just wandered into my life at exactly the wrong time. Still, let’s take another short section from it, and something else designed to cause misery:
“Make your bedroom your allroom. Live and work and play in the smallest radius you can.”
Some people literally have no choice but to live like this. In fact, I was one of those people until very recently. Lack of money is very much a thing these days. And all days. Forever.
The concept of the video is, of course, about turning typical self-help advice on its head in an attempt to get the point across in a more engaging way. But the advice it’s trying to get across is exactly the same as if you’d done the video straight. And the problem with all this advice is that it often assumes that you can create perfect circumstances for yourself. Hey, want to be happier? Live in a bigger house, and work 9-5! That’ll sort you out!
Anybody can paint a picture of a perfect life – or, in this case, a perfectly imperfect life. Advice on how to live better within the constraints society puts on us? That’s worth rather more.
Me and my sister have had many conversations about how similar our jobs are. On the other hand, if my channel falls off-air, nobody dies. ↩
