Good instead of perfect
Running up hills, wearing slippers and my new favourite valley (plus some chat about procrastinating and stage fright)
I’ve started this week’s newsletter about twenty times, got two lines in and realised I’m not really sure what I want to say. It’s Thursday evening now and it’s due to go out tomorrow morning, so I really need to get on with it. [Edit: now it’s Friday morning and I’m still writing.]
Last year I got fully addicted to a game called Two Dots. I’ve never really played phone games before (the Candy Crush era passed me by without incident) but in the midst of the period where I was spending all my time on the sofa watching old episodes of 24 Hours in A&E, I got served a well-timed Instagram ad for Two Dots. Kind of as it says on the tin, you progress through the levels by connecting dots as increasingly elaborate obstacles try and get in your way. (Rampant fire! Swinging gates! Little monsters!)
Within days I’d crept into a podium spot on the leaderboard which is both impressive and horrifying for a game that has more than one million Google reviews. I daren’t even look at my screen time for that period but I was connecting dots from literally the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. The only time I had a break was in the shower and given that I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything I can’t say I was showering that frequently. Pretty much everything else I learned how to do one-handed so as to not interrupt the game. If you ever phoned me during that time, you can bet you were on loudspeaker so I could keep playing while half-listening to you.