True To My Word

Although awake before the alarm, my bones felt like rubber and my brain seemed to be sloshing around like a motor-function bisque inside my head. By the time I stumbled to my feet and tottered through the flat, I prayed that I had got the days mixed up and today kicked off the weekend and not the working week.

My fault really. If an idea fires my imagination, it bugs the hell out of me to have to sit on it. Through all the various stages of a project, I love the research phase. It’s the enquiring mind, wanting to find new things out.

The first book I can remember seeing was an atlas at my grandparents’ house. It was a slender volume compared to the tomes available today. But every visit I would reach up and take it down off the shelf. The cover had a photograph of a locomotive on the Canadian Pacific Railway. I would sit and pore over the pages, learning the names of countries and capital cities.

Working at the animation studio, before the internet was widely accessible, animation directors would come to me for reference. Whatever they needed, whether it was raw information or simple visuals, I normally had it for them the next day.

So the discussions Friday and Saturday fired me up. It would have been easier to push everything else aside and concentrate solely on them. Except it doesn’t work that way. So time has to be afforded to add them to the list. Which, over the last two days has cut into sleep that the body wants.

Some years back I came across the hunting phrase “A good dog will run until his heart explodes.” Which seemed about right. Something piques my interest that I can get my teeth into, I’m not going to let go.