Enough

This is probably a bad day to do this but writing a new blog post is on my list of things to do and it has been months sooooo do you ever have one of those days when you think what's it all about and when the hole in the wall where you've been hitting your head just gets bigger?  And bigger? Where it doesn't seem to make as much sense as it once did?

This isn't a picture of me of course.  My desk is never this tidy.  My desk has never been this tidy.  My desk wasn't this tidy when it was brand new.  But it absolutely sums up how I am feeling today and just how hard it is to concentrate day after day on what amounts to quite mundane tasks when what matters is creating great work for young people and children, yeah? Or creating opportunities for aforementioned great work. Isn't it?

I'm not dissing the report writing or the fundraising or the writing of objectives or plans or even the need for any of these things.  I accept that accountability is necessary and I accept that we need to justify our very existence in terms of all of this but it does sometimes seem to log jam... A full-on endless round of new things with imminent deadlines. Here's me.

The trouble with this office, if trouble there is, is that it's an open office.  We welcome people - especially young people - into it.  And they speak to us and ask us stuff and like to be involved and have their say and be included in the heart of what is being reported.  That's the problem, if there is one, because all of that stuff matters way more than all the reporting and paper work that eats time that makes it all possible.  Sheesh, it's one long round of juggling, balancing, thinking, circularness isn't it?  It's a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on a half ... 

This calls for a song: 

I'm wondering if you've worked it out yet?   What all this is actually about?  I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, 'It's Friday.  She's just trying to wind down the hours tile the weekend.' You think I'm 'avoiding' work - using the excuse of a blog for a little wander around the internet.  

Oh yes, I forgot.  Working Sunday.  

I'm supporting Walking into the Distance.  A new piece of work by Kailey McGowan which is on a week Friday (a week today) and supported by the Arrow Group's devised piece, Paloma's world.  For details, ring 01282 427767.  And aside from being evidence that young people really are making their own theatre and being facilitated to do that, it's also a fundraiser. We are taking a group of our older young people to Edinburgh in the summer - and we need a big fat pot of money for it.  (Any one seen one idly lying around? No?  You surprise me!)

Am I complaining?  A bit, yes.  Do I think it is a force for good all this youth theatre malarky?  I do, yes.  I absolutely do, yes.  Why else do you think I'm sitting here with the rising tide of paper threatening to engulf me and suffocate me and rob me of my very last breath?  Because youth theatre is an absolute force for good.  It is. Even if the Artistic Director is sometimes a bit fed up and a bit overwhelmed by the demands...

Right - off now.  If you don't see me for a bit come armed with a shovel.  :)