boundaries, bimodal work and a new booth.

Much of the effort I’ve poured myself into this past fortnight has been in an attempt to make the eponymous juggle of work more accessible and manageable on an ongoing basis, from here on out — but in truth, I’ve really only started to crack the conundrum in the last 2-3 days.

I posted on IG a brief while ago about the depths that this period of enforced seclusion in lockdown has allowed (forced?) us to plumb. It seems I’m not the only one (which is quite comforting, honestly) who has been shown our patterns of “yes” (when we would rather “no”), of “now”, of “must”; of “too much and all the time”. Personally, I’ve observed how my tendency is to say a reasonably instant “yes” to most things asked of me by others — sometimes not even asked of me, but merely suggested. Not out of being flattered (although there’s probably an element of that in there too), but out of a deeply programmed belief that all others’ needs are more important than mine. That my own work will get done “some day” when the requests stop coming.

An ingrained, service-based behaviour perhaps, born of growing up in a restaurant kitchen: that in order to take pause to make my own meal (perhaps even to work out what I want to eat), I just have to cook this one customer’s order first and clean down the kitchen again. But of course the dockets keep flowing in from the dining room floor — and I keep hiring more staff to manage the influx — and I can’t possibly stop until all the customers have left the restaurant, full and satisfied, night after night after blessed night.

Let me pause here for a moment and really acknowledge that this is a blessing. I am enormously grateful to have every and all such requests. The tendency to say “yes” to all these sweet suggestions is in part also born of the freelance existence. At any moment one might be jobless. Certainly in the case of this current climate. In this way, my gratitude is honestly, perpetually overflowing. So I think that a huge part of this work is that of delineation: between gratitude and acknowledgement of the opportunities — whilst also balancing a judicious selection of what work to focus on — feeling confident that all opportunities will not evaporate with the strategic application of a single “no”. Or even a succession of them.

Harder still too, I think when one is not a white, cis male in my industries. Perhaps not a popular thing to say, but fucked if I’m going to lie about it: For the majority of my career, being a woman of mixed-race, Asian descent with an Asian name in the business of on-screen representation and storytelling meant excellent (read: halfway decent) opportunities were scarce, and for the individual were reliant on being completely agreeable, of phenomenal skill and talent, perpetual attractiveness, and impeccably good behaviour. Frequently, also, an allegiance with stereotypes that were if not personally and culturally insulting, then pretty reductive. One could not choose. There was nothing to choose between. Autonomy was not even on the table; reliance had to be understood (but never discussed) as a matter of bloody survival.

But the time has really come to draw a line in the sand.

This past week I’ve been juggling the tail-end and premiere release of a new audio work I’ve been directing, a gentle influx of auditions for jobs I’d actually like to do in 2021, and gigs with beloved voice clients of course. I’ve also been boning up on an exciting new narrative podcast job I’ll be performing in next week alongside what sounds like an incredible cast, diving into the possibility of a writing project (or several) for next year, and planning out the development of a film experiment I’ve been trying to sculpt since the beginning of the pandemic, but haven’t quite found the time to dig deeply enough into.

And it hit me as I was trying to work out how to not only shuffle shit around in my calendar to make this all work, but also to give myself enough “buffer” time to change hats between each role (hint: waaaay more time than I think I’m going to need) that This Is Unsustainable, and I am, apparently, not actually fucking superhuman. Which of course came to me as a huge and rather unwelcome surprise.

So in addition to taking a lot of time to contemplate and itemise exactly what is and is not in alignment with my artistic values and priorities (thumps head on desk repeatedly for five minutes), and really etching into stone the feeling of what it is to make decisions from that place (as opposed to “the immediate yes” of scarcity, obedience, flattery), I had to critically interrogate how to engage with my own projects when I have so much “real world” work to do.

The key thing to note here is that the work I’m trying to create of my own requires incredibly deep focus. The kind that — fuck — I really struggle to get to within the space of a couple of hours. So, these remarkable humans’ suggestions (those who can go deep, quickly) that I can work for a half-hour, or even a 3-4 hour block in the evening; or… set aside Thursdays or Saturdays and Sundays — I’m ghastly afraid, do not work for me. I’m in deeeep admiration of the access they have to their flow-state. But mine’s so much more awkward to get to, it would seem.

I realised (in trying to hack out two hours a morning several days in a row this week to write) that in order to make any real artistic progress (as messy and crap as it might be) I have to actively secrete myself away for a minimum of five days, but preferably two weeks. In looking back I see that this has actually been the only stretch of time that has allowed me to make any progress on a major project. And this discovery has been a much-needed alleviation of the burden of guilt I’ve been carrying around with me for years over been a terrible morning-worker. I am, as far as these kinds of projects go, a Bimodal worker, as dubbed by Cal Newport in his book, Deep Work (I highly recommend it). It is a relief to recognise.

Yes, it means for the most part being utterly unemployable for that period of time, but so be it. I am therefore officially taking two weeks off over the Christmas and New Year period To. Simply. Write. Huge sigh of relief.

And the final piece of the puzzle for me at this time, as trivial as it might sound is this:

While working from home during Covid as a voiceover artist (and I anticipate some of the WFH will continue for a while, if not indefinitely), there’s been a bit of a process involved.

To keep it brief: at the start of the pandemic being really — you know — a pandemic, I invested in reasonably good gear, knowing I had some key clients that would need the highest quality sound I could get from a home studio (short of being an engineer — and I really don’t need another hat, cheers); this made sense knowing most film & telly sets were shut down so there was small chance of landing any of that work over this weird period. But we didn’t know how long this would last, so hubs and I set the “booth” up in the spare room — you know, the small one with all the spare linen kicking around and the ability to drape the doona over the closet? Yeah, that one.

And the process is — well, I’ve been doing this dance. The dance of not only the hat-swaps, but of getting up from my desk, unplugging my computer, taking it into the spare room, plugging it back into the power and the pre-amp (which connects to the mic, which sits in the booth) and the dongle that allows us to connect with the studios live; and then at the end of the session, wandering out into the dining room to the light and the air to upload and send off the audio file. And I know, I know. It isn’t such a big deal. It’s… walking five metres if that. Carrying a damn laptop, at most a hard-drive around the house. Hardly anything to lose sleep over. And nothing in comparison to driving from studio-to-studio.

Except it has been something I’ve lost sleep over. It’s been… weirdly difficult. On top of everything else (mental health, hat-swaps, survival, Covid-19), that bit too much cognitive load. I have a study that I do all my other work from that could fit a tiny booth, but it’s just been too close to the street for our spare-room setup to be sonically viable. And — call me fucking mad — but for the past few months, I’ve wanted to feel like Just. One. Person. For the director, writer, actor, voiceover artist professional human being that is MZH, to be able to do the majority of her #WFH work in the one workspace. To have my booth nestled in, next to my desk, so that I can do a job and send it off… well, from my office, as facetious and as vain-trivial as that sounds.

And so, because I just could not shake this frustrating feeling of essential division, I went in search. Folks, I went in fucking deep. And I came up with, for a not-breaking-the-bank-record-from-home booth, relative gold. What I found was the IsoVox 2. It’s designed and made Sweden (bless the Scandinavian’s black metal-loving souls) — the website promised free international delivery (ex-taxes) within 4-5 days and holy shit they delivered (!?); and it comes with a mic stand made in Germany that could withstand the apocalypse. And I’m fucking thrilled. It works. It sounds great. I did my first session on Thursday in my study, and I’ve got to say, the spatial consolidation was indeed a sweet, sweet, peaceful relief. It’s given me a weird sense of professional integration that I’ve been missing for some time.

So, that’s it. Boundaries, bimodal work scheduling, and a new booth. Three reasonably large, and essential tools that have been coming into focus over the past period, that only really began to resolve themselves properly on Thursday.

There is now a teenage BMX-gang having a meeting outside my house. And — oh my god — an ice cream truck playing Greensleeves circling the block. It’s clearly suddenly the 1980s again and therefore time to abscond from my computer, go do some yoga and read a script. x