The big problem with reading blogs, articles and social media about writing is that, after a while, I start to think that everybody has got their act together except me. There are all these people who somehow manage to write 2000 words before breakfast, get a book cover designed before lunch, and appear on two podcasts and write a guest blog post before tea.

Every day.

I get fed up with reading about all this, not because I’m envious but because I think it sets people up to feel bad. It’s like all these Facebook updates by people telling us how wonderful their life is. I think it’s unhealthy to read this type of thing constantly. Maybe one or two stories can serve to inspire, but not the relentless barrage of positivity that, I suspect, is mostly confected anyway.

I thought to balance it all up a bit I’d write about an episode which, although perhaps not typical in all the details does at least serve to point out that most of us manage to achieve things despite everyday life rather than as a result of it. It’s an article, in other words, for normal people rather than superhumans.

We look after an elderly relative who does not live with us. We see him almost every day, but sometimes it’s not possible or feasible. Hence a few days ago we phoned him up to say we couldn’t visit, but we could chat on the phone. My lady wife had some things to do, and my intention was to read a book and review it — the editor of a magazine had asked me if I could turn it around within a day because another reviewer had let him down.

Hmmm. Hope springs eternal and all that.

He answered the phone. We could hear him, but he couldn’t hear us, so he hung up.

We tried again, and the same thing happened.

We thought OK, he is having a bad day, we’ll try later or tomorrow.

But he had other ideas. He kept phoning and phoning, each time with the same result. After a dozen such calls, and when the two of us started to go slightly insane, I decided to go over after all to see what was going on.

It turned out that not only had someone turned the volume on his phone down, but that his hearing aid had fallen apart.

I spent half an hour trying to put it together. I was so wound up that it didn’t occur to me to try and find a video on Youtube about it. I realised that anyone who knew what they were doing could have fixed in 5 seconds.

In the end, I found an old hearing aid that gave him some hearing, and made an appointment to take the one in bits to the audiology clinic the next day.

In total, attempting to phone him, which would have taken around ten minutes, ended up taking around 4 hours. I managed to get the book read and the review written, at the cost of a very late night. The reading I’d planned to do had to be shifted to some time in the future, and blog posts I’d planned had to be shelved.

In summary:

Phone call —> visit relative —> attempt to fix broken hearing aid —> searching for old hearing aid —> checking that old hearing aid worked at least to some extent —> phone call to Audiology —> visit Audiology —> visit relative.

Hence the title of this blog post, which is dedicated to all those writers who are looking after elderly relatives, young children, holding down a job, dealing with gas bills, doing shopping etc etc etc. That’s why I’m always delighted when someone — an “ordinary” person — pops up on Twitter and says they’ve just had a book published. That’s an achievement in itself.

This article was first published on my writing blog.

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