Download today’s Dollop in its audio form here
The absolute ridiculousness of this 366 consecutive daily blogs project has really become apparent over the last twenty-four hours. The other two went straight to sleep after getting back from our evening out in Melbourne. I thought that I would quickly check tomorrow’s Dollop before going to sleep, so I sat on the bed with the laptop. The next thing I was aware of was waking up at 7am, lying on the bed with the laptop on top of my stomach. In fact, I’m not even sure at first if I realised that I’d been asleep, for as soon as I was back into consciousness I immediately began reading the Dollop from the point that I’d gone out of consciousness a few hours earlier. It appeared that I’d fallen asleep halfway through writing a sentence. Seconds after waking, I had completed the sentence, although, there were still another 290 days to go before I’d truly finished my sentence. You see what I’ve done there? Using the word sentence in two different contexts in order to create a bit of wordplay. You’re in safe hands my friends; as you can see, I know what I’m doing.
I’d written just over 700 words. It wasn’t the most interesting or funny blog that I’d done, but it wasn’t bad. I didn’t really have time to do any more work on it, it was now 7am, and we’d planned to go out at 9 to do some touristy things in Melbourne, which we’d planned to do yesterday, but then all the shenanigans happened. I had less than two ours to tidy what I’d written up, record the audio version, edit out all my mistakes caused by my inept Braille reading, upload the audio and written versions, promote it on Facebook and Twitter, and code the RSS feed to update the podcast. This was the 75th Dollop, featuring the peculiar sounds that my nostrils were making, which I hadn’t yet edited down from the half an hour I recorded. It would be madness to think that anyone would want to listen to half an hour of nose noises; although a minute would clearly be completely sane, normal and fine.
However, as I was reading through what I’d written, I was struck with inspiration, and before I could stop myself I’d written another thousand words on top of the 700 I’d written yesterday. By this point the other two were up and getting ready to go out. I now had an hour to do everything I needed to do, plus it was going to take me even longer to read and edit now, because I’d increased the Dollop by 150 %. While the other two were brushing teeth, showering and readying themselves to go out, I had only just finished writing the Dollop, the length of which could have sufficed for two or three blog posts.
The other two said that they would wait until I’d finished, but I knew that it was going to be another two hours before I was done, so I told them to go into the city without me. I had come all the way to Australia, and rather than going out and experiencing the place, I had chosen to sit in a hotel, editing “highlights” of a half an hour recording of my nose making weird sounds. To be honest, I think the word “highlights” might be stretching it a bit. It was essentially just someone’s nose making odd noises when he breathed out, nothing to write home about, which is precisely what I was doing, only instead of writing home, I was writing to hundreds of people on the Internet, and I wasn’t just writing, I was recording it as audio as well.
The plan had been to set off for Melbourne early, spend the day in Melbourne and then come back at about 4pm ready for that night’s gig. As the other two pointed out to me, not only would I be passing up the opportunity to go out and do something in a country I’d never been in before, but also I had no way of really going anywhere or doing anything once I’d finished the Dollop. We didn’t have any cash on us, as we are using The Young’uns card, so I wouldn’t be able to get any food. But the prospect of sitting in a room alone and hungry for hours while the other two went out exploring Melbourne was still better than the notion that my nasal noises wouldn’t be released in time, meaning that I’d fail the David’s Daily Digital Dollop challenge, only a fifth of the way through.
I finished the Dollop, had a shower and then replied to people’s comments on the last few Dollops. My day had so far consisted purely of Dollop-related matters.
Here’s another example to demonstrate how obsessive a project this has become. I realised that I hadn’t added the correct tag to the start of the nasal noises audio file, meaning that it wouldn’t show up in stats and I would have no idea how many listeners it had gained. I was genuinely annoyed at myself for forgetting to add the file to the stats service. I swore out loud and called myself some insulting words, before I realised what an idiot I was for caring about any of this, and that my life priorities and sense of perspective had clearly gone spectacularly and worryingly out of kilter. This realisation caused me to burst into a fit of laughter at how ridiculous I and this whole thing was. I’m not sure whether the realisation of my insanity helps make me more sane, although the fact that I was in a room by myself giggling might redress that; also, does the fact that I’m aware of my insanity, but that I keep doing the insane thing anyway, make me more or less sane? The answer is less, clearly, less.
I thought that I should maybe have a little relax and do something none-dollop-related for a couple of hours, otherwise I would definitely be driven mad by the whole thing. But then a message appeared on my laptop that filled me with horror: The WIFI would only last for another three hours. I couldn’t be certain that the venue we were playing at tonight would have WIFI. There was nothing for it but to quickly make another Dollop. I’d literally just finished writing and recording Dollop 75, and now I was about to immediately start writing Dollop 76. I had three hours to write, record and publish the Dollop, as it was a race against the WIFI time bomb.
It would have to be a short Dollop, as I couldn’t afford to spend too long writing it, as then I wouldn’t have time to record, edit and publish. But my insanity proved itself to be alive and kicking once again, as I ended up writing what may well have been my lengthiest Dollop yet, over 2000 words. When I’d finished typing, I checked the time, and realised that I now only had an hour before the WIFI would be disconnected. For some reason, I had made my task even more difficult than it already was going to be, by writing the longest blog post that I’d ever written, when I was meant to write one of the shortest.
I powered through the recording and the editing, and managed to get the Dollop published a minute before the WIFI was lost. Success! Well, I suppose it depends on your definition of the word success, but I had done it.
The previous Dollop had only been posted at 11pm the day before, UK time, and now, because of the WIFI time bomb, I’d released another Dollop a mere six hours later. In less than 24 hours I’d written and published over 3500 words. Most people would have probably gone to bed by the time I’d released Dollop 75. By the time they’d woken up there were now two more Dollops.
I need to stop typing today’s Dollop now, because we need to go out at 430, and it’s just gone 3, and I still need to tidy it up, record, edit and do all the other publishing bits and bobbs before we head out. It’s another race against time. If you’re reading this on the Thursday, then you know I’ve succeeded.
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