Sickness and Time: End of Year

Hallo! I’m recovering from being infuriatingly sick for weeks! Which means I’m awake and feeling borderline human and can think without coughing (!) and am basically more than just sweaty automaton. I have enough juice in the tank to make words in a row!

Basically, I got off the plane from Aus not sick, and then within about three days I was sick and promptly did my mechanical best to make everything worse. I know it’s no fun to hear about other people’s exciting sicknesses, so I’ll spare you graphic details of my feverdreams and dewy brow and swooning couch etc etc.

When it comes to the more interesting bits of the way I made myself sicker, that’s the psychology of doing work that you love and which requires your full physical and psychological presence. No phoning it in, just taking a disease and feeding it a 10 day week of long long LONG days without any moment for recovery that wasn’t filled with preparing for the next bit of work. And it was all SO INTERESTING AND FUN AND URGENT! And then suddenly, I was in bed.

For a solid week from landing I was booked in to record an audio documentary (out in 2020! On work/life balance! For Audible!), do meetings, finish a radio play pilot (will they commission it!?!), plan excel spreadsheets and prepare and lock in podcast things (for the launch of The Last Post TOMORROW) that had been put off til I’d landed back in London (my fault for the delay!), and had to be GOT DONE before the CLoSe oF BusiNess 2019, and then in the evenings, gigs, including starting the run of sidekicking as The Dog of Doom in Andy Zaltzman’s glorious annual Review of The Year show.

And all of a sudden I’m in bed.

For DAYS AND DAYS AND DAYS, aside from lugging myself to the show and back home. (This sometimes involved ordering a cab while in bed and tracking the 7 minute arrival as a timer to motivate me to put clothes on and get to the door, because that was the level of effort I had, and also probably deep revelations of the ways in which I use the presence of other people’s needs and expectations to leverage my motivation). And then all of a sudden I feel a bit better and it’s the end of the year!

It’s been such a wild year, and I feel like I should sum it up and have profound thoughts and insights or maybe lists. Would you like lists? But I don’t know what would go on the lists, and I’m tired.

And Australia is on fire and friends and family are having to leave their homes and I’m so far away from that, which feels good or bad(?) and thank goodness for smartphones, because these fires are worse than other big ones have been but so many fewer people have died. But even so, people have died, and other people are trying to make points about politics based on the deaths, and any list would have to have that on it, or worse, left off it. I can’t do a list. This is a good thing to know if you’re stuck somewhere without power though.

New Years Resolutions? Maybe I should do them.

I would like to make sure I’m doing good things for the world and for you who support me and engage with my work, I’d like to make work that is useful and interesting and thoughtful.

But all of that is platitudinous and I feel like I can do better. I bought a cheesy “goals” journal so I can sort out some of the things in my life that feel a bit reactive and chaotic and under-thought-through. I do need to get better at that sort of methodical planning. My twin told me that in youth, as we’re building our brains, we trade off structured thinking with creative thinking, and I’m not sure if I entirely believe that, but certainly he’s better at making methodical list-based plans than I am, and I’m probably better at writing comedy.

I feel I should apologise because I ended up taking an unplanned couple of weeks off Tea With Alice, mainly because I was asleep about 18 hours a day for ten days, but I figure it’s a holiday time of the year, and if I don’t believe in the universe telling me to take a break, I do believe in a week of being flat on my back perhaps being some sort of union activism from my cells.

BUT

Next year will bring more Teacasts, FASTER! HIGHER! BIGGER CUPS! More conversations with interesting people, and the launch of The Last Post Bugle spinoff, which will be a daily short podcast coming through the pipes to you from an Alice Fraser in a very slightly alternate universe.

Also, current projected launch date for Savage on amazon prime is April 17, and if you’re in London and want to see it live, Soho Theatre 2-4 Jan is your chance to do that.

I’d hyperlink stuff but I think I’m going back to sleep.

All my love for the new year, and may you have a year of interesting problems and delightful, satisfying solutions. I hope you get a chance to give lots of love and kindness, and have time for thoughtful insights. Smell some flowers, why not?

More thoughts to come, open to requests and suggestions as ever.

Pleased you exist, as ever

Xx

A