10 000 Hours? Mission Accomplished!

From "The Joker" by Lee & Ditko, Amazing Fantasy #5 (1961)

       
In February 2010, I started writing a couple of blogs. As I know I've said before, I'd been ill for more than just a few years and my mind and body alike were in poor shape. Something needed to be done, and after a few weeks it became obvious that this silly, self-indulgent, solipsistic business was a major part of that something.

Though I'm not sure when I decided to keep blogging until 10 000 hours worth of work had been done, I do know that it happened early on and that it seemed an entirely impossible ambition. In fact, that very impossibility was a good part of why I went with the whole absurd project. I'd long since found it hard to imagine a future that extended beyond the evening of the same day. Yet here was the audacious idea of 10 000 hours. A clearly impossible target, and all the more attractive a prospect because of that.

Just to pretend to set out to fulfil it was a ludicrous, and therefore life-affirming, business in itself.

From "Beasts Of Burden: A Dog And His Boy", by Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson (2006)

         
Now 10 000 hours have passed. I've checked the tally, I've checked it again. It clearly can't be true, but it clearly is. I seem to have completed the purpose of the blog. I wish it hadn't come in a week when I'd caused a good few people to decide that I was an irredeemable idiot where the Cage post from Sunday last was concerned. Clearly, 10 000 hours haven't taught me how to negotiate my way around such rocks. I thought I could learn to work better under pressure if I attempted a demanding piece in a single sitting. Whatever I may think of both my own arguments and a response or two  to them elsewhere, I could and should have known better than to take for granted the meaning of my piece. Still, another lesson learned. And without having all of those hours to burn up anymore, the pressure to post has certainly evaporated. There'll be time to check and check and check again now.

It's odd to think that I could throw in the writing and take up gardening, or Latin, or power-boat maintenance. 10 000 hours of carpet restoration, with dog-grooming and ice-sulpting too. Sweet-making, archaeology, bird-watching, or installation art? I have, touch wood, another 10 000 hours going begging now ...

From Judge Dredd: The Days After, by John Wagner &Henry Flint, 2000AD #1789

       
To my genuine surprise, it turned out that there actually was a tomorrow after all. Thank you for your company as I've trundled around the track, no matter how brief our passing moment might have been. For what little it's worth, TooBusyThinking will - despite the unexpected arrival of the end of the track - continue in some form or another. There'll be review or two going up tomorrow, for example. There's an interview which I think folks will be very interested in as well. But I did have such great plans for August, and now I've discovered that I'd already fallen across the finishing line. It seems I need a new impossible project. At the moment, I'm tending towards giving myself 5 years to learn the basic skills associated with producing a graphic novel of my own. That sounds a ridiculous enough business, and since I'm 50 in just a few week's time, it may well be the perfect moment to amble off on such a Quixotic endeavour.

But whatever, that's one job done. Take that, 10 000 hours! Overall, I had alot of fun, I met some lovely people and I even learned one or two things.

Huzzah! Never mind the quality, count them hours!

From Kingdom On An Island Of The Apes, by Doug Moench & Rico Rival, in Marvel's Planet Of The Apes #9, 1975

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