Progress

The good news is that I finally finished writing the first draft of the script for the Bicentennial exhibition's documentary. It caused me two whole weeks of waking up at 3am and working again after I came back from the office until I collapsed. I finished completely exhausted and with a ridiculous cold that knocked me out for a whole weekend. I missed one day of work and I wasted my precious Saturday and Sunday waltzing in and out of feverish states.

I guess that is also why I have managed so little during this short holiday. I went through corrections yesterday with the head curator. It doesn't need much in most chapters, but it turns out that my research assistant's work was completely wrong for one of the topics and now I must redo her work as well as rewrite the whole chapter. Then I've got the hideous task of timing it, shortening it to 15 minutes and adding footnotes for the filming crew to capture all the artwork and images that must appear throughout each and every second of the piece... still lots to do.

So this is what my holiday to - do list looks like. I've got 5 days left to do this:

1. Read books:

- Design and evaluation of cultural projects

- Marketing for the arts and culture

- Helena Kennedy (Eve Was Framed)

- Sarfraz Manzoor (Greetings from Bury Park)

- I should also read the volume of Simon Schama's History of Britain I've been carrying around for the last four weeks, but I need to be realistic. There's no way I'll manage all this in the time I've got left.

2. Close my home's accounting for 2009. I need to figure out how our finances are doing so Andrés and I can decide our next steps for next year. I dread this one.

3. Catch up on my office work. January is going to be pretty busy with the Hay Festival coming up and I must not have as many overdue to - dos as I have now.

4. Finish my ICCA text reviews. I haven't even had the time to check out the submission deadline calendar, and I fear I've lost the chance of getting paid for the reviews I've already done because I never had the time of sending my invoices.

5. Finish my bicentennial script. This is a top 1 priority.

6. Read all my overdue magazines. I've got 4 Parketts, at least ten Art Forums (one more about to arrive shortly), a few Art Nexus and a whole stack of a mixture of Colombian magazines on arts, books and culture. Not manageable at all if I also want to cover my points 1- 5.

7. I have to knit baby booties for my former boss's baby and my first childhood friend's baby. They have both been so amazing to me I'd be ashamed if I went over to meet their firstborns in January empty handed.

So not much time and millions to do. I need to start waking up a bit earlier. Which also means I need to be going to sleep a bit earlier. So good night for now.