Work day today. Didn't get a great deal done in regards to productivity - particularly since I went straight from work to socialising. I did swim and I was all set up to do some more exercise on top of that but a quick burst of rain swiftly dampened my spirit. Honestly, I'm glad it did. I was sore all over and I need to catch up on sleep. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bummed but, as I've said before, the point of this blog is to develop a sensible work ethic - and mindlessly grasping to a schedule just for the sake of it is not sensible at all. Eventually, if it hasn't already, it will become unhealthy.
Far from a wasted day, though. Aside from all the work I got done for my actual jobs, I FINALLY came up with the sketchings of a story idea for the play I want to write. I've been kind of sitting around waiting for something to enter my head for a couple of weeks now and I'd actually decided today that I needed to start writing regardless of whether I had a clue or not - just to get the juices flowing - but, in a weird domino effect, I pieced together some kind of set-up. I individually thought of a handful of interesting ideas and then, as I was leaving work, they kind of just collided and exploded together in my head.
The basic run of ideas started with me thinking about the concept of my phone not working and me thinking it was (and vice versa). I'm not proud to admit it came to me while I was wondering if people were ignoring my messages (hey, none of us are immune to a little insecurity). I got fascinated by this idea of things being broken without you realising they're broken - because you don't actually know what they're supposed to be doing. Following that, I found myself on a bus wondering what day of the week it was and wondering how it would feel if I went to bed on a Monday and just randomly found myself on the way to work on a Friday.
I combined these with two other ideas I'd had (about a professor living in a world where everyone speaks in pure gibberish and a taxi driver who never, ever, ever gets a customer) and just some general fascinations (the concept that the internet has meant no-one will ever fully forget us, even if we would like them to do so) and, eventually, they all kind of fell into place. I'm still working out the particulars but the general idea is a man realises that he has no way of knowing if his friends are dead or alive and spends the play trying to figure out which of his friends are alive and which of them simply seem to be alive due to their online presence.
It kind of hinges on the concept of facebook ghosts. A high school friend of mine committed suicide a couple of years back and I used to get messages from facebook asking why we hadn't spoken in a while. His profile still exists. There's another urban legend about a kid whose mum died - where the kid discovers his mum had sent him a message every day on the game Animal Crossing. It's reputed to be a misunderstanding but it's an interesting idea. With a combination of answering machines, facebook, blogs, scheduled emails, auto-reply - how long could someone live after death online?
That's the basic premise. I think it's a big breakthrough. I feel better about not being quite so productive in other areas having come up with it.
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