I'm On A Plane And I'm Really Bored

I have absolutely no idea where I’m going with this. The blog, I mean. I know where the plane is going.

I was hoping to have some work to do on this flight. Unfortunately, a brief I thought would come through yesterday didn’t materialise. So I’ve got about two and a half hours to fill. And I’m going to fill at least some of it with some random ramblings about freelancing, working for myself in general and anything else that pops into my head. I make absolutely no promises about the quality, accuracy or entertainment value of the following. It is little more than a thought dump. So if you’re sitting comfortably, I’ll begin.

Firstly, a question: at what point in time did it become acceptable practice to simply ignore people’s communications? I’m thinking specifically work emails here, although the same thing happened to me countless times during my brief, ill-fated forays into the world of online dating. 

If I’ve sent someone an email about something relevant or important, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in expecting a response. I don’t expect a response straight away, but I expect one at some stage. I make a point of replying as quickly as possible to people who email me, and a lot of the time they come back with something that starts along the lines of ‘Hi Dan, thank you for the speedy reply’. 

To me, good two-way communication is just common sense. I get the feeling a lot of my work contacts think I’m really good at it. But I’m not: I’m just operating at the ‘normal level’ and everyone else is crap.

I should qualify the above by saying that my current roster of regular clients are, on the whole, very good at responding to relevant emails. Many of them are very busy people and if there’s a delay in them getting back to me, there’s normally a very good reason for it. But many people seem to think ignoring fellow professionals is OK. It isn’t. It’s bloody rude.

I’ve sent so many messages to people who are looking for copywriters that have seemingly just disappeared into an empty void. One potential client, after a phonecall where we discussed a new project, sent me information and guidelines to research. Once I’d done that, I tried to get in touch to arrange the kick-off meeting. An email, a phonecall and a voicemail message: all ignored.

But the star prize for this has to go to the company who failed to reply to my email inquiring about copy services, but still put me on their mailing list to flog their bullshit events and seminars. That is piss-takery of the highest order.

Right, that’s enough about that because it’s just going to wind me up. I’ve just bought a bottle of water on the flight and it cost me three euros. Well, I think it cost me three euros. The person with the trolley just took my card, beeped it through for contactless payment and gave it back to me. I never got to see the screen on the card reader and I didn’t get a receipt. To my mind, that’s pretty dodgy practice by this particular airline (clue: the bloke who runs it is a gobshite). My next bank statement will make fascinating reading.

Through random seat allocation, I’m sat in the very last row of the plane on this flight and I’d forgotten just how bumpier the ride is when you sit at the back. There isn’t really any proper turbulence today but I’m bouncing around like a fat bloke sat on a washing machine doing its spin cycle. It’s actually making it bloody hard to type. If there are any typos in the blog, I’m blaming it on the bumpiness. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

The other problem I’m having is that I’m on one of the new-spec planes that have these slimline seats. Which, to be frank, are crap. I’m probably in a minority saying that, but slimline seats on planes are an absolute load of bollocks. 

They free up a lot of legroom space, so you’d think that for a 6ft 1in man like me, I’d feel like they were manna from heaven. But in reality, these seats are so thin that they’re really uncomfortable to sit on for any flight longer than about an hour. They are the literal, physical manifestation of a pain in the arse. They are so uncomfortable, they’re even worse than the seats in Milton Keynes shopping centre which had the metal rails put on the top for no good reason.

I’m trying to take my mind off the pain by thinking about how far I’m come in the four months since I went freelance. I’m not going to go into too much detail because I did that last month. But what I will say is that I still haven’t quite got used to being self-employed. 

I think it’s because I’m so used to having implied pressure in my daily working life. I’d become institutionalised in having to be at work at 9am, having to stay and work until 5:30pm, taking no more than an hour for lunch, and having to get certain jobs done by a certain time so that I didn’t get shouted at by a middle-aged man. 

Now that I can (within reason) work where I want, when I want, none of that applies any more, but the implied pressure lingers on inside my head. For example, yesterday I nipped out for a couple of hours to have lunch with my mate Jon at Burnt Orange and hang out at his office. I felt like a kid skiving off school and that I was being irresponsible, even though I didn’t have any pressing work needs that afternoon. (For the record, the only time I skived off was to go to Silverstone to watch a Formula 1 test day, back in the days when it was free. Completely worth it.)

And speaking of motorsport, the new MotoGP season is only a week away and I can’t wait. Even though last year was a bit of a damp squib as far as the championship fight was concerned, the individual races were, by and large, hugely entertaining. I am still slightly embarrassed that I got so excited at Silverstone last year when Alex Rins beat Marc Marquez to the finish line that I threw my hat into the air. But that really was an absolute thriller of a race.

I’ve already booked up my trips to the races in Texas in April and in Germany in June, with more in the pipeline. Although knowing my luck, coronavirus will spread to such an extent that the races and/or my flights get cancelled. Then again, at least that’ll cut down on the number of flights where I have to type up dreck like this to pass the time...