Rob Gilroy: Making A Stand #3
What do you do for a living? You. Yes, you. What do you do for a living? Oh, that’s nice. How long have you been doing that? Hmm, that’s interesting. What, me? What do I do? Well, I’m a comedian (subtext: unemployed) but then you’d know that if you could be arsed to read my previous posts. I don’t know why I bother, honestly.
Anyway, prentending to be a comic means that I spend a lot of my time working from home. Obviously, when I say ‘working’ I am referring to the writing and ‘prep’ side of the work. I don’t gig in my house. I’d struggle to anyway, especially over the sound of the dishwasher. Besides, I’m not allowed in the living when my mum has friends round. The point is; I’m one of those people who tries to work from home. You know one of those annoying morons who pretends they have a proper job and yet spends all their time on YouTube, looking at videos of dogs riding bicycles whilst howling along to S Club 7 B-sides? Well, that’s me. Hello!
When I write this column, it involves nothing more than sitting around – often in my PJs – and tip-tapping away at a laptop. Just like that woman from Sex in the City, although my life doesn’t feature quite as much promiscuous sex or cocktail drinking. And I bet she doesn’t have a pair of Batman pyjamas. Her loss. It’s not quite as glamorous, I’ll grant you that, but I can guarantee that Sarah Jessica Parker doesn’t get to eat as many cheese and ham toasties as she likes, while watching Loose Women and sitting in a den made of dining room chairs and a duvet. She’s just sat at home, listening to her husband banging on about the time he was in Ferris Buller’s Day Off. Get over it Matthew – we’re all past it so you should be too. Great film, though.
The one major problem of working from home is me.
I seem to have an in-built ability to avoid work as much as humanly possible. I don’t quite know where I find the energy to be as lazy as I am. Well, it’s not laziness to be fair. Laziness is when I feed the cat the bits I find down the back of the sofa, because the bin is at the other side of the room. It’s procrastination. I can think of a million better things to be doing instead of work, like; tidying the spare room, reading my girlfriend’s Marie Claire (excellent exfoliating tips!), exercising on the Wii Fit, crying because the Wii Fit told me I’m way over my target weight (it’s water retention!), etc , etc. You see? The list of important jobs is endless. I can’t be wasting my time earning money by working, not when there’s an omnibus of Win, Lose or Draw on Challenge TV. It’s all about prioritising.
It’s not that I enjoy procrastinating, I’d much rather get my work done as quickly as possible so I can get on with my life, but it’s not always that simple. It’s like having a tiny angel and a devil on each shoulder; the devil is telling me to forget about work and perform handstands on the bed, while the angel is congratulating me for at least turning the laptop on and making a start at work. At which point it decides I should celebrate by performing handstands on the bed. It’s a vicious circle of distraction. And one that’s costing me a fortune in bed springs. (To be fair, though; that’s something else I have in common with the Sex and the City girls.)
Another of the major problems is writers’ block. I know it’s not an actual real-life thing, but if I pretend it is then at least I have an excuse when it comes to having no column to hand in. My mind isn’t what it should be. It isn’t a fizzing centre of imagination and creativity, waiting to spark off moments of genius, in fact it’s a battered and useless lump of mush that can just about help me remember the lyrics to Gold by Spandau Ballet. It isn’t the trusty sidekick you would hope for. You know how MacGuyver can get himself out of any situation with only the help of his noggin? Well, I can’t do that. I’d just end up trapped in a warehouse, staring the strip of rope, electric tooth brush and drawing pin, and crying into my lap. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried to train myself to be more proactive. I once bought one of those ‘Make Me Better at Stuff’ hypnotherapy tapes that Paul McKenna does, but I couldn’t get the plastic wrapping off, so I gave up after five minutes. I now use it as a coaster.
So you see, it’s not easy being a stay at home-worker-person. It’s a constant battle to overcome distraction after distraction after distraction after episode of Diagnosis Murder. That’s why David Cameron moved to Number 11; because if he lived and worked at No. 10, he’d never get anything done. It really is the hardest job in the world.
Anyway, this is all just a roundabout way of saying; I never got round to doing a proper column this week. Sorry.
