You know that film Sliding Doors? You know, Gwyneth and the guy with the eyebrows from the funeral in Four Weddings and a?

Yeah well I find the concept of that movie fascinating. For me though, sometimes, I don't have to pretend: I'm living two different versions of my life AT THE SAME TIME.

Next week, I'm going to Horsham, in Victoria, for my law-talking job. I have been on the phone to people called Joy and Graeme discussing the use of the local hall and the whereabouts of extra chairs.

The week after that, Stew and I are going to meet Rita in Sydney again for a bunch of meetings. At no point will we discuss the whereabouts of chairs, extra or otherwise.

Same life, two different universes: very boring film.

By the way, and I know this last bit has very limited appeal to the general population, but hello Felix.

More tomorrow.

L

I just did something totally mental. I checked my email for this time last year, when I was directing our most recent comedy festival show. I say this is mental due to the stark relief it puts my current state of existence into.

This time last year I had hundreds of emails in my inbox, many of which used some or all of the words "quite urgent actually".

One of them was an email from Rita asking if Stew and she could turn up to rehearsal on Thursday to discuss work cover, contracts, props, stage management issues and upcoming photo shoots for local media. One of them was an email regarding prize winners from Melbourne University who had won tickets to the show - one of whom I used to work with. One of them was about the fact that I had to squeeze in a radio interview and two school visits before the weekend, and one of them was from the Red Cross asking if I could donate blood next Tuesday. The Red Cross - I don't know if anyone else has noticed this - has excellent comic timing.

Anyway. So that was this time last year. Today? I called a man from the Horsham RSL and sent a fax to a gallery.

This "concentrating on development rather than production" certainly has a different pace to it, doesn't it.

(Exit stage left to get coffee in sunshine and contemplate what to do over Easter break - BREAK, YOU SAY???)

As per my previous post, below, I have achieved another concrete thing today, as opposed to writing a few pages of something I am bound to delete at a later date, which is what the word "achievement" comes to represent in the world of writing.

I remember once getting the uncontrollable giggles in the audience of a Chekhov play because someone near me in the audience loudly predicted the next line would involve someone yearning for work. The person who predicted this did so in a broad Australian accent, loudly and at a moment of intense silence. I totally lost it. This was of course the great Chekhovian joke, that people in loungerooms sit around all day gossiping and desiring with heartfelt passion to contribute in some small way to society, but never actually contribute to anything apart from the monotony of their own dreary existence.

I don't know about society but I have definitely contributed to the upkeep of my motor vehicle. That is to say, a Mr Rick Thorn contributed to it and Stew and I "helped". As a result of this, I now have a shiny car. Check it out. If you concentrate, you can see Stew in the reflection:

Trouble is, after doing a cut and polish on the car, I have also cut and polish my hands, part of my face, and a section of pant. Oh well. At least I'm a hardcore DIY home improvement nut now. Right?

Writing is such an amorphous task. Even when you have a deadline and you meet it, you're never quite finished. Nothing else ever quite qualifies as anything other than procrastination. If you wash the dishes, you can accuse yourself of procrastinating. If you go to work: procrastinating. Hanging out with friends? You're only cheating yourself.

So every now and then, just for a moment, I find myself imagining doing something where an effort - physical rather than intellectual - yields a result. An old friend of mine is a cabinet maker - JEALOUS! Another friend knits actual clothing, as opposed to scarves that go nowhere because the incompetent person knitting the scarf doesn't actually remember how to cast off and then gets interested in watching series 3 of The Sopranos and discards the entire project only to find it, still attached to the knitting needles, when moving house years later.

Point is, for Christmas this year I got the Best Present Ever: a one hour pottery lesson. I've never been happier in my life. Look:  

I actually - rather than figuratively - got my hands dirty. And I produced something, too! Look:

Sure, slightly less useful than cabinet making but I get the feeling I'll be the proud owner of maybe a million bowls and oddly shaped vases if I give in to this mesmerising addiction. Still. It was fun to actually produce something. Next, I'm cleaning the car. Maybe. After another cup of tea.

Things there should be words for:

- The act of laughing in memory of something, the exact nature of which you have forgotten. Recently, I walked down the street and started laughing to myself. I was remembering a moment in Sydney when Rita and I were bent double at 1am, laughing ourselves sick. What the hell were we laughing at? Neither of us can exactly remember although it is vaguely possible it involved a pirate. Point is, the memory of laughing is what amused me. Not the joke.

- We need a replacement word for moreish. As in, "these chips are moreish". We can do better than that surely. Who came up with the word serendipity? Or the word crash? Get those guys on board.

- The sensation of time passing quickly but also slowly. I have said this here before but the fact that it's almost the comedy festival is, frankly, ridiculous. I'm not even missing it yet. Conversely, December was clearly years ago. See? New word please.

This is my submission to the word police (love your work guys, big fan obviously). Suggestions welcome.

In other news, our friend Kaz is writing a book and she needs some help. Check this out:

It's about everything women think is important (or appalling) including confidence, body image and appearance, health, emotions, purpose, relationships, friends, family, nesting, work and money, getting older and shopping: the lot. It's going to be called Women's Stuff.

Please help to research Women's Stuff by going to the website kazbook.com and filling in the survey there.  The results will be used to research the book, and your quotes may be published (you can use a fake name).

So. If you're like me and you've always wondered "who are these people? 87% said what?" then get on board and do a little procrastinatorial work for the good of the nation. If you're a bloke and you're feeling left out, I recommend YouTube.

And yes, procrastinatorial is a late entry to the word police. What do think guys? Pretty good huh?

Sometimes, as a writer, it's nice to deal with facts. Here are some facts:

1. From where I sit every Tuesday, I can usually see a cluster of blue hills called the Dandenongs. Today, I can barely see Richmond. There is smoke in this city and it ain't pretty.

2. There are 24 hours in a day. This is ridiculous and should be audited immediately.

3. The Carlton post office should be made the subject of a nature documentary, for I believe it contains information systems designed to keep the population down via a process whereby customers die of old age.

4. The smell of a giant box of pencils is lovely.

5. When I was little, a couple called Mr and Mrs Dixon lived over the road. They were terrifying. Their letterbox had Mr and Mrs Dixon written on it. They frowned and mowed the lawns and looked like they had marched to nineteen-eighties Greensborough straight from the fifties. One day, my friend Simone and I went over there to ask Mrs Dixon for some things to sell in our store. We had decided 30 seconds previously that we wanted to open a store in the street - people could give us things they no longer wanted, and we could sell them! Brill! Anyway, Mrs Dixon asked where the money would go to, and Simon said "to us", so Mrs Dixon thought very seriously for a moment before returning to her house. We were thrilled! The Dixons had nice things, our store would do well!

Mrs Dixon returned. She gave us a coat hanger. It was pink. I found it the other day when cleaning my house. Simone and I never did start that shop. Sometimes I wonder what happened to Simone.

Dear writers who have writing to do,

Here are 20 easy steps towards getting started:

1. Get yourself some writing juice. Perhaps a cup of tea.

2. In order to write, you must know what you think. Read the paper.

3. Contemplate the nine letter word. You're a writer. Should take no time at all - and it's good for you!

4. I know, right? Me neither.

5. Refocus. Perhaps a cup of tea.

6. While the kettle boils, do one of your other tasks so as to save time. Unpack the dishwasher.

7. At this point, most good writers will become unnecessarily obsessed with cleaning the front of the dishwasher until they have broken out into a fine sweat and are squatting on the floor surrounded by outcrops of cleaning equipment, soaps, and, mysteriously, a spork.

8. Spork is a good word. Note that down.

9. Now. That tea we had on the boil. What of that?

10. Better check for inspiring news items. Hang on, who's in Paris with Jennifer Aniston?

11. What is that noise? Investigate.

12. Return from laundry having completed new load of washing, batch of ironing, and levelling of dryer so as to avoid any more annoying thumping sounds in Pristine Writing Environment.

13. Seriously though, you have to have your finger on the pulse. Check facebook.

14. Perhaps a coffee.

15. Girl in coffee shop = new best friend. Important to gain new and interesting perspectives on life for purposes of writing things completely unrelated to coffee girls, Jennifer Aniston, or Facebook statuses.

16. Investigate whether statuses has a more elegant plural. Discover, dismayingly, that statuses is in fact correct, rather than the much more obvious and literary stati. Consider working this idea into something. Consider what that something might be. Have another cup of tea.

17. Clean entire house. There. That feels better. Now we have a good working environment in which to write... what exactly?

18. Now... only when it is several hours before your deadline, mind racing, talking aloud to yourself, skipping meals and refusing to answer the telephone: start writing.

19. Feels good doesn't it. AND you have a clean dishwasher.

20. Adopt attitude of superiority and pride in reaching deadline with seconds to spare. Celebrate like giggling schoolgirl. Repeat.