Long, weak, long weekend

I'm not sure where the time goes. Did I stash it in a pocket without thinking? Did I lose in on the train during my commute? Or perhaps somebody ate it by accident while I had my back turned.

I say this because I have seriously thought about why I always seem to be working. This excludes the wonderful (long) weekend I just spent at the Sydney Writers' Festival. I spent pretty much all of Thursday as a volunteer supervisor (8.15am to 7.30pm, what was I thinking?!), though this was preceded by a Wednesday night of working late to make up for the fact I'd be away for a couple of days. This meant I got approx 5 hours sleep - definitely not enough.

Fortunately I wasn't so foolhardy on Thursday and went to bed at about 10pm, slept for more than 10 hours and spent a cruisy morning trying to ignore the fact that I had to go to work on my day off. The reason was because otherwise Jen would have to proof the spreads for my part of the magazine and the last time she did it, I found 10 mistakes afterwards and had to live with four widowed sentences because we couldn't afford to resupply all the pages affected. And this lot is for the special relaunch issue, which comes with its own party, for which I will miss 'Uncle Boonmee who can recall past lives' at the Sydney Film Festival.

Not only was everyone surprised to find me at work on my day off, some of them decided to be smartarses about it: "How is your holiday?" to which I deigned not reply but just gave them a look. I mean, what can you say? If you come back with something funny, you're being flippant about your time. If you come back with something about the importance of the work, then you sound like a loser, or sound condescending. So I chose to say nothing, just got on with it and left ASAP.

I caught one SWF session on Friday afternoon, and that was 'Who needs a publisher anyway?' with Marcus Westbury and Mark Pesce. It was quite thorough. The main takeaway for me was that every piece of commmunication has a suitable form and that form is not always a book. Therefore, digital forms will not necessarily subsume books - they can coexist.

I also forgot to mention that on Thursday I asked Marcus (@unsungsongs) to drop by the info booth where I was supervising: I'd bought him a panda hat from Beijing. Now, I don't actually know Marcus. Apart from going to the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle, which he began in 1998, for several years now, I only really 'know' him through Twitter (I like what he does in terms of amalgamating politics and the arts and other media forms). He actually follows me back.

Anyway, before going to Beijing I was researching the price of panda hats so I could prepare to buy one for Ness, tweeting things like "panda hat, panda hat, does whatever a panda hat does" (a la the spider-pig song from 'The Simpsons Movie'). He must have happened to see my tweet and, having a somewhat crappy day, he said something like "panda hat indeed, that's the only thing that will cheer me up". I remembered this when I went to Beijing Zoo and bought two, one for Ness and one for if I would ever see him.

Yes, I thought it was kind of stupid. When I unpacked I thought about other people I could give it to, like my niece, because I started to doubt that I would a) ever be in the same place as Marcus to give it to him (he's Mebourne-based); and b) actually have to guts to give it to him considering he doesn't know me (and I don't want to appear stalkerish). Then I found out that he'd be at SWF on the same day as I'd be in control of the info booth. Woop!

[@unsungsongs: Omfg! @witmol just gave me an awesome panda hat! Must. Not. Wear. Panda. Hat. At writers festival.]

Friday night was Bollywood Night at Sir's place (my ex-flat). It was the first time I'd been back to Waverton since I moved out. It was very strange to resist fumbling for my keys at the front door, trying to remember which buzzer to press. Even stranger to see the bare walls (and the lack of book shelves) still dominating the main areas! We saw 'Dhoom', which was hilarious.

On Saturday I actually went to SWF events: 'Politics, Art, Ecology' and 'Still the Lucky Country?' in the morning, and 'Only the critic' in the evening after going to the Opera House for the Sydney Symphony's Mahler concert 'Tears & Ecstasy' with Assie. I came home and did some transcribing for work. I'm so weak about standing up for my own time.

Yesterday: supervising at the Heritage Pier, which was easy, although so very cold and so very wet. I sat in on the 'Tweeting from Tiananmen' session (#swfchina), which starred SWF director Chip Rolley and Chin Jin talking and Anne Summers (Chip's partner and renowned essayist) on the laptop.

I include a gratuitous pic of Chip (right) because I think he is cool (and also I have a tiny crush on him, though it's hard to hold hope when Anne is such a fierce intellectual and I am a comparative hack). He sought me out later in the afternoon when it became apparent that poet Les Murray was ill and would not be attending his reading.

[Chip: "I have a secret to tell you, Les Murray won't be coming." / Me: "Thanks, but I already knew - did I just get that secret before you?" / Chip: "Well, here's something else: if anyone wants to complain, take their name down and we'll deal with it."]

After my shift, I caught the dregs of the zine fair and bought up a few things, then met with Wendy and Nicky from writers group to discuss the latest. When I came home I started writing an article for work but stopped when my eyes got blurry.

Today I failed to wake up properly to my phone alarm and missed my dentist appointment; had to reschedule that appointment AND the optometrist one afterwards, which meant I had to pay for parking... I did manage to buy a new alarm clock, though, so I don't anticipate a repeat. Went for a massage and then came home and finished the article.

I work a lot. I don't think I mismanage my time - so why do I have to do so much extra work to do outside of business hours? All other time has been devoted to real things like eating, going to the dentist etc, and SWF, so I can't see that I'm wasting it. (I don't even read much outside of commuting and eating, even though I'm currently hooked on Elliot Perlman's 'Seven types of ambiguity'.) Wish I had time to think about it.