It All Takes Shape! | The Friday(ish) Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday(ish) Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

What have I been up to this week?

Over the past week, the structure of my video has been really taking shape. The reading and research phases are now well behind me and all my focus is on honing the “flow” of the video to ensure I’m introducing each of the ideas in an entertaining and approachable manner. Two sections are pretty much at final draft stage already (I might go back to add an extra joke or two if I read them back later this week and feel that they’re a bit serious!), one is about half-way there and the final two are planned but still need to be properly written!

My initial goal had been to have the script completely finished by this Friday. This would have allowed me a few days of filming in various different outfits and set-ups prior to going on a scheduled holiday (which will be my first week off work in a long, long time!). Unfortunately (and maybe at risk of oversharing), over the past week, my very, very wonderful yet very, very elderly Gran has been reaching the last few days of a life very well lived. As such, I’ve been taking some time away to visit her and also to support my family. As a heads-up, the video is therefore likely to take a couple of weeks longer than the bi-monthly schedule I’ve been operating for the last year. It’s very much in my nature to want to apologise here but I know you’ll all be very understanding.

In not entirely unrelated (but much more positive!) news, as part of some broader reflecting that I’ve been doing around timescales and workload, I’m potentially going to look to hire a part-time video editor soon. It’s going to be a bit of a risk financially, however, while I’m keen to keep making ambitious videos, I also don’t want to slip to releasing a video at anything less than once every two months. My hope is that hiring an editor will allow me to ensure I can continue to be consistent with that schedule even when unexpected events arise. It will also hopefully mean that I can focus my energies on doing just one person’s job rather than one-and-a-half people’s jobs! This plan is still a bit of a hatchling at the moment but I’ll keep you updated if I do decide to move forward with it.

And outside of work?

As mentioned above, much of my time outside work this week has been spent either being with or thinking about family. Nevertheless, last weekend, I went to the Royal Cornwall Show which is a big agricultural show. It’s hard to explain but it’s kinda like Glastonbury meets the fun fair meets an open-air market meets the biggest gardening festival you can imagine. It’s something I went to quite a lot when I was younger but haven’t been to for some years.

We got up to all sorts during our day at the show: drank some ciders, listened to some music, ate some nice food-truck food, bought some clothes, tried some fancy jams… A really nice day in the sun!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

I’ve recently been re-watching Arrested Development on Netflix which has been a really interesting experience. As someone who is always interested in the ways a particular era is expressed in its culture, it’s been fascinating to see the clash between aspects of the show which feel “eternal” and other aspects which feel very specific to the early 2000s. It’s worth acknowledging that there’s a handful of homophobic/transphobic jokes in there which have, to put it generously, not aged well. A lot of the humour, however, is really fresh. The silliness and speed of it in particular are just great. At the same time, there’s a thread of jokes and plot lines tied to the Iraq War which I had just completely forgotten about. I’d certainly be really interested to see how some of that stuff comes across to an audience that wasn’t alive during that period!

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of the Friday Update. I hope you’ve found it mildly insightful.

Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!