#oneaday Day 354: Productivity

I have recorded… counts ten videos this weekend. Two Atari A to Z, two Atari ST A to Z, two Atari A to Z Flashback (one of which went out yesterday), two Warriors Wednesday and two Final Fantasy Marathon. I have had a blast doing so, even if it is both time-consuming and tiring.

It's amazing how productive you can be when you actually enjoy what you're doing… and how demoralising it can be when you're stuck somewhere having to do things that you don't really want to do, that you can't really feel the benefit of doing and that sometimes you don't entirely feel like you get the recognition you're sometimes due.

Don't get me wrong, I've said on numerous occasions that I don't hate the day job; I'm actually rather grateful that it's not worse than it is, and that I can get things done to a good standard in a reasonably short timeframe, allowing me enough time during many working days to be able to actually get some posts done on the sly.

But I don't love it. It's a chore. It's not something I look forward to getting up for every morning. I'll reiterate: I'm not at a point where I dread getting up for it every morning, like back when I was teaching, or when I worked for SSE, but I am at a point where getting out of bed feels like just another installment in a long and interminable series of… something that simply isn't going anywhere. A series with no entertainment or cultural value along the way; it's just sort of there. Like Eastenders, only with less murder and adultery, and the world's most boring Christmas special.

Still, as I say, I shouldn't be too mad about it, because it keeps me paid each month, with enough money left over to be able to do some of the things that I want to do — and then, of course, you wonderful people help me out by providing me some very welcome pocket money with which I can further explore those things through investing in new hardware, software and whatnot.

I can't pretend after weekends like this that it's not nice to dream, though. I remember how much I enjoyed getting out of bed in the morning to work on USgamer and GamePro; it was something that I genuinely loved doing, much as I genuinely love doing what I do now with MoeGamer and Atari A to Z. Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to do that every day? If I can be this productive over two days of a weekend, imagine how much I could get done if I had the whole week available to me!

Still, it remains just a dream for now. One that I don't know whether or not it will ever be achieved; this sort of thing often feels like it's up to the whims of fate and destiny more than it is up to the time and effort you put in yourself. So sometimes you just have to keep plugging away and hope for the best!

So that's what I'll keep doing.