Week 27 - Andrew - Deadlines

Worst Andrew,

Hope you are well.

I wanted to write a quick note, just to cover some concerns I have around your historical and current relationship with deadlines. This is the fourth or fifth week that 'Thing a week' has been delivered within the last half hour of the allocated week.

When we began this operation, I took in good faith that your experience as a project manager, and your day-to-day work bringing together complex campaigns for large clients would translate. Sadly, this has not proven to be the case.

Working with you, I've managed to isolate the root cause of the problem - in short, you are an idiot. Saturday mornings, you routinely wake up between 30-90 minutes earlier than your wife. This would be a perfect occasion to write thing a week. You could sit in your bright living room, fizzing with caffeine, and knock out a few hundred words beautifully capturing something meaningful. Instead, you watch the Shield. Vick Mackey isn't going to write your thing a week!

As an alternative, you could wait until late on Friday evening. Once you were a couple of cocktails in, dry martinis with flakes of ice, just Hunter S. Thompson your way through a blast of keyboard chatter. Instead, you watch Youtube music videos until you fall asleep.

This week, I'm confident that I'll receive yet another 'word count wonder'. Can we schedule a call for later this week to make sure that you are clear on the opportunities available to you.

Regards,
Better Andrew

PS - 20 mins a day on a train. You could jot down a few ideas? nope - you watch the shield on your phone.
PPS - We still need to have the weight loss conversation. I'm aware you're ignoring my emails.
PPPS - My solicitor is now managing conversations regarding your responsibilities around 10K running.

Week 27 - Laura - deadlines

I wasn't always good with deadlines. In effect I gave my very first one - my own due date - the two fingers by showing up two weeks later.

I cottoned on to the concept of working to a set schedule pretty quickly though, and despite (or perhaps as a result of) setting reminders on my phone for stuff as simple as putting on a wash, I'm now both used to, and pretty good at, deadlines.

I've managed to comply with a bunch of not unusual life ones already - getting the CAO form filled in on time, sorting out a working holiday visa for Australia before I got too old, arriving at nightclubs minutes before having to pay, applying for jobs before the closing date, making it into work for 9.30am every day...

As a journalist I work to a weekly deadline - 3.30pm every Thursday. It mostly works out fine.

My strangest deadline to date has been set for January 16 next.

That’s when Mario* is scheduled for arrival.

Of course, if he’s anything like me, he mightn't bother showing up in January at all.

Which could be a good thing, if he fancies celebrating his birthday in the future. If he has a mid-January birthday no doubt half the friends he’ll invite to the party won’t come because they’ll be getting by on noodles until pay day, and the ones who do won’t be up for birthday cake thanks to pesky New Year diets. Although on the other hand I’ve a feeling any person I’ve had a hand in making will be pretty persuasive. And will probably have more than one party per birthday, which could eliminate the whole pay day problem.

Anyway, January 16, there or thereabouts, is the deadline for when - all being healthy - I stop being responsible for just me and start being responsible for another, little, helpless person.

Me, who once - temporarily forgetting that eggs existed - hazarded a guess that farmers kept hens for their feathers. Me, who in a childhood essay advocated marrying a very old, very ill, very rich man. Me, who spent much of my twenties thoroughly testing my capacity for alcohol. Me, who sometimes picks mould off bread and toasts it (the bread, not the mould). Me, who doesn’t have a pension. Me, who has to go through a ‘phone, keys, wallet, lip balm’ check-list just to leave my own house.

I hope he’s not expecting a particularly sensible upbringing. Or even a particularly organised one.

On the other hand I’m pretty good at Lego. I can make basic train/airplane noises. I’m ok with singing songs in cars on long journeys, once they weren’t originally sung by a purple dinosaur or his friends. I’m cool with reading lots of books and watching some daytime tv. I’ll be a great partner-in-crime when it comes to being messy. And once he can talk and ask Sean if we can get a puppy I’ll be right behind him saying ‘Yeah, can we Sean, please?’.

It’s going to be a lot of fun.

*not his actual name