Yesterday was the best day I've had for ages, I've been working super hard. In December I had 3 jobs with the theory I should just take the work while I can because I knew I would have no work in January, so I could take some time to relax then. That was only half true: I had no income in January but there was no time to relax as I had to home school again. It wasn't awful, I'm pretty well qualified as a homeschool teacher and Percy is a pretty good student but I wouldn't call it relaxing. We did some nice things and we formed a childcare bubble so sometimes I was homeschooling 4 kids and sometimes I did have a day without kids where I could do all the other jobs. When Percy went back to school he came home with a honorary teacher certificate for us with an attached KitKat and 1 tea bag which me and Dan shared. 1 finger of KitKat for 3 months of homeschooling seems fair payment.
Now that school is going back I finally have some art projects to do again, one of them has been delayed a whole year. So I'm really excited to be getting on with that again, when it's all going well and I have loads of work it's my dream job. It has been hard work though, I've made this mosaic bigger than it should have been because I'm not very good at estimating the area of circles. These 2 mosaics will use up approximately 8000 tiles.
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| Those pink things are meant to be flamingoes, (I copied them from a child's drawing) |
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| both mosaics are not quite finished. |
But yesterday was the best day ever, the first hot day of the year. I love the sun so much (if I lived in a sunnier place I would be a much nicer person) and I love water, and my family are ok. So a sunny day on the river with the family is probably my favourite way to spend a day. And thanks to the Rule of 6 in gardens, it was legal. (Apart from the bit where some of us were inside a canal boat and I thought 'just because we're moving and this isn't a house doesn't mean we're not indoors.')
The boys were very excited to see Granny and Grandad again. Percy has recently got really into chess. He's read 2 children's books on chess and is now reading an adult chess book. He beat grandad at a game and was very smug about it. Percy has also combined his love of chess with his love of dancing. I helped him write some of the lyrics to his chess dance and he does the steps to show which way each piece moves. e.g
"forward forward side,
is the way I like to slide,
you may call me "horse"
but I'm the knight, of course"
and...
"what you're looking at,
is my lovely pointy hat,
the bishop that is me,
I move diagonally."
He is not your average 6 year old.
Eric also had a lot of fun playing labyrinth, the maze board game, and winning a tug of war with his secret tactic that he told us about later: "not letting the other person know that they were playing tug of war." The boys have finally reached good ages that I think I'm suited to parenting. Baby's are cute but they're not well suited to a day sitting on the roof of a canal boat.
Having such a good day makes me wonder should we try and move to a sunnier place near a lake or the sea? Or should we just enjoy getting to go here and see family on sunny days. I feel very rested there but if I actually lived there maybe I wouldn't feel like that. It's not exactly been a restful home for may parents over the last few months. The street was completely flooded and so nearly all their neighbours have moved out and most won't be back till after the summer which is really sad.
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| Yesterday |
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| a few months ago in the flood. |
I'm trying to decide what things to go back to when things hopefully get normal again. When we went into lockdown I was doing way too much and I was relieved to have a break. Comedy had taken up so much of my life, most night I was out gigging or practising a set or doing all the little jobs I have to do to run my own comedy night. This was all a choice of course: I decided to take every comedy opportunity for a year to see what would happen and some things had happened, I had progressed, I was getting paid work, I met loads of people, I was booked in to do a hour long show in 3 different cities. But the year had ended and I was 6 months into the next year and it wasn't sustainable to carry on like that forever.
The problem is that a lot of the people who make it in comedy are those who just give it everything and work super hard and don't give up. I don't think you can really progress if you choose to just do it once a week, or choose not to travel to other cities for example. There's so many comedians whose relationship breaks up due to never being in, or who's mental health is terrible. They are a weird but loveable people group comedians.
Much of my drive to do it came from feeling like there wasn't much representation of people like me in the comedy world, there are loads of women in comedy but there's often only one on the bill. There aren't that many married women or mums. I find the MCs and the promoters and club owners are almost always men, which makes the atmosphere blokey.
I know I can't go back to doing as much as I did before lockdown, but it's hard to decide what to do and how much to do it. I will have more time now because Eric gets 3 days a week of nursery and in September he will go to school. But hopefully a lot of that time will be spent earning money. I was considering stoping doing my own night (Early Risers Comedy Club) and focusing more on gigging other places, but I've decided to keep my night, and focus on writing more new stuff and to cut back on traveling long ways for gigs, unless they're really good ones.
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| Early Risers |
Other things I want to make time for are having people round for meals, joining a group for either singing or dancing (I can't decide which and I don't have time for both) and church stuff like getting to know other families in our church, by helping to arrange some social stuff for the kids. There's a million other stuff I want to do too, but I guess you can't do everything at once.
