Working From Home Herald - Issue 27

 

The Irrational dislike:

I am pretty sure this is a thing, but it certainly is for me. I am of course referring to having an irrational dislike of a celebrity. A person I have never met, don’t know anything about in regard to their personal life and has never, I repeat, never done anything mean or horrible as far as I can tell. At least, they have definitely never done anything to offend me personally. And yet… despite knowing all of this, despite reasoning through all logic you find yourself not liking them. 

It is unreasonable, stupid and even a little pathetic. I am not going to reveal who the celebrity is because knowing my luck, someone reading this will know him personally and may be offended. In true Line of Duty fashion let’s call the mystery man X.

I could not articulate why I feel this way. The poor man has done nothing to warrant these feelings from me. In fact, millions of people love him but for some reason when I see him my toes curl and my teeth itch.

Why am I confessing these shameful, ludicrous feelings? Well my irrational dislike has become a bit of a running joke in my family, especially during lockdown where the poor  celebrity appears to be on the TV every moment of the day: I come down to make a tea first thing in the morning and he is there, mid-morning break and he is there smiling and bringing joy to others, I close my eyes of a night and his image is burned into my retinas. 

The boys have even started telling others how I wake them up shrieking as in pain and they have rushed downstairs to see what the matter was, only to find me cursing the poor man for being on my screen. 

So back to the reason of this column. It was my birthday two weeks ago Sunday and it appears my irrational dislike has become so prevalent in my family that Joseph decided to present me with the following Birthday Card.

I think I have a problem.

The sound you didn’t know you were missing:

There are many things we have missed during lockdown: seeing loved ones, the gym, the cinema, having the freedom to go and do what you wanted but as the restrictions are gradually lifted, I am finding there are things I missed that I didn’t even know that I missed. 

Last Friday was a classic example of this. I had finally met up with a group of mates, we were seated in the pub garden, we were freezing but also insanely happy. When all of a sudden something happened that prompted a reaction which brought a smile to everyone’s lips. I am of course referring to an incident that happens at least once on a night out and that is someone dropping their drinks and glass smashing on the floor. 

This is then accompanied by ironic cheers and even a round of applause. It is something that normally irks me, but last Friday I loved it. It was a sound that I didn’t realise I had missed and signalled another step in the return to normality. We are getting there people.

The circle is now complete.

As a Star Wars fan one of the things I looked forward to most when I became a Dad was sharing my love of the films with my children. When Joseph was born, I don’t think he had much of a choice on whether he wanted to like the films or not and was subjected to them from the minute he could understand Mickey Mouse clubhouse. By his 4th birthday he could recite lines of dialogue which made me a very proud father. 

It didn’t matter that he called Darth Vader “Dun Dun,” based on the Vader’s Imperial March music that plays when he is on the screen, the important thing was that he loved Star Wars as much as me. 

Jamie followed suit and I was ecstatic that both boys loved the franchise I loved. So happy in fact that I didn’t mind getting duplicate figures and toys so that they didn’t fight over them. But then something unforeseen happened. Something I did not allow for. They suffered from Star Wars fatigue. They slowly but surely lost interest in the films and toys. Don’t get me wrong they still pretended to love it as they knew how much I did, but where as before they could name every character and perform the dialogue, now there was head scratching and “Oh I used to know that” type reactions.

When Toby came along, I had learned from my mistakes. I was patient, I bided my time and tried not to force things. It was a testing time, tentative enquiries into whether Toby would be interested in watching Star Wars received zero interest. Casually having the films on, would result in Toby asking if we could watch something else. Times were tough, there was a little bit of soul searching going on. Was Toby even my child?

But then all of a sudden, two weeks ago, he saw the light. I can’t point out what made him interested but he asked to watch the films and absolutely loves Return of the Jedi. He has also played relentlessly with the boy’s figures. I’ve even let him play with some of the very old, toys that I own - very supervised mind with a clear instructions that they are delicate and some of the ships are to be looked at only - yes I know how that makes me look, I don’t care. Those toys are my babies and worth a fortune. 

Toby’s interest in the films and toys have reignited Joe and Jamie’s love for them. Jamie is ploughing through the Clone Wars cartoons and the boys have even undertaken Jedi Training by using their lightsabers on the bubble machine in the garden.

All of this was in time for Star Wars day (May the 4th) and basically, I am once again in geek heaven!

Discord and the writing bug

I stumbled Discord quite by accident and instantly felt like I was light years behind everyone. I was asked in a writing forum if I wanted to be part of their Discord group and just thought it was a fancy name for another forum. Little did I know if was a completely different platform along the lines of Slack. 

For those of you like me who had never heard of Discord it is a VoIP, instant messaging and digital distribution platform designed for creating communities. Users communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called “servers.” It is mainly used in the gaming community but there are several writing channels. 

Having joined it, I have found it immensely motivational to discuss writing with other like minded people who are more than happy to share resources, tips and tricks with others. It is also a great way to obtain instant feedback or advice. 

It has also increased my productivity massively. This is due to an automatic tool it has called “sprintos.” Like other timed productivity tools I have discussed on here in the past, I work best in timed segments. In Discord you start a sprint and others instantly join if they wish. You then “race” against other authors to see how many words you can do in 15 mins or 25 mins (you set the duration). The winner doesn’t matter, but knowing you are up against others really motivates me and I found doing just two 15 minute sprints a day before and after work, saw me write 1,000 words easily. 

This was especially useful in April as it is one of the three months of the year where authors are challenged to write a high number of words. In April it is 30,000 words but you can also set your own target. This is exactly what Jamie did who saw me doing it and wanted to write his own story and so set himself a target of 10,000 words.