Perfect Day
When I found myself "resting" between jobs last year, I happened to be watching Richard & Judy (the First Couple of British daytime TV), which is of course one of the perks of not working. Their in-house life-smith, Dr Raj Persaud, was doing a segment on Motivation - how to do all those things you never quite get round to doing. It seemed like a good time to be pursuing such matters, so I happily rang the premium line number and forked out the required £1.50 for the accompanying factsheet.
When it arrived, I enthusiastically threw myself into the various exercises it contained. One of them asked you to describe what your perfect day would be like in a completely anything-goes-sky's-the-limit world. In mine, I awoke in a sumptuous lakeside house just outside Barcelona and spent the morning working on my novel. I can't quite remember what I got up to in the afternoon, but it involved going into town and meeting up with friends. Then in the evening, I had dinner with my boyfriend Rufus Wainwright (not quite sure why I picked him, but he seemed like good ideal-world-boyfriend material - as long as he didn't have a relapse and end up back on the crystal meth, of course) after which he got us into some fascinating ubercool club.
Shortly after that, the work started coming in, and the factsheet ended up abandoned half-finished. (A classic vicious circle - I didn't have enough motivation to get through the thing that was supposed to give me motivation.)
But the reason I bring this up is that as I sat in one of my regular caffeine dens this morning tapping away on the trusty iBook, the whole thing drifted back into my mind. And it occurred to me that right now my life is pretty darn close to the real ideal which the exercise is supposed to reveal. The mornings I spend writing my book, and the evenings I spend enjoying the company of my great boyfriend. Melbourne may not be quite as curvaceous as Barcelona, but it's still pretty groovy. Steven may not have released quite as many CDs as Rufus, but I can live with that. And my friends are the other side of the planet, but I'll be seeing them soon.
Of course, it won't be long before I have to do some proper work again to get more of that stuff called money. But today I just thought I'd stop and look around. And the view looks good.
When it arrived, I enthusiastically threw myself into the various exercises it contained. One of them asked you to describe what your perfect day would be like in a completely anything-goes-sky's-the-limit world. In mine, I awoke in a sumptuous lakeside house just outside Barcelona and spent the morning working on my novel. I can't quite remember what I got up to in the afternoon, but it involved going into town and meeting up with friends. Then in the evening, I had dinner with my boyfriend Rufus Wainwright (not quite sure why I picked him, but he seemed like good ideal-world-boyfriend material - as long as he didn't have a relapse and end up back on the crystal meth, of course) after which he got us into some fascinating ubercool club.
Shortly after that, the work started coming in, and the factsheet ended up abandoned half-finished. (A classic vicious circle - I didn't have enough motivation to get through the thing that was supposed to give me motivation.)
But the reason I bring this up is that as I sat in one of my regular caffeine dens this morning tapping away on the trusty iBook, the whole thing drifted back into my mind. And it occurred to me that right now my life is pretty darn close to the real ideal which the exercise is supposed to reveal. The mornings I spend writing my book, and the evenings I spend enjoying the company of my great boyfriend. Melbourne may not be quite as curvaceous as Barcelona, but it's still pretty groovy. Steven may not have released quite as many CDs as Rufus, but I can live with that. And my friends are the other side of the planet, but I'll be seeing them soon.
Of course, it won't be long before I have to do some proper work again to get more of that stuff called money. But today I just thought I'd stop and look around. And the view looks good.
posted by Dan in Melbourne at 3:22 pm
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