Monday morning moves in after a sleepless night

 Monday morning moves in and, after a sparky flourish, the day settles into one of calm reflection. Sleep was mostly elusive and the night awake was spent listening to, and trying to make sense of, noises that seemed to stem from the apartment below. It’s difficult to describe the sound, something like that of a drawer being opened and closed every few seconds. At other times, it is like a hard ball being rolled up against a wall, as if a cat is playing, but it doesn’t last long enough to be this. Thoughts drift to 7am meetings which ultimately get cancelled. By the time they are cancelled, I have already woken early, showered, and started to work in anticipation.

                  The day drifts on and I am a waste of space. Slow, and struggling to concentrate due to the lack of sleep, but also because I am excited about the trip to San Diego next week and, for the first time in months, a change of pace and a change of scenery. Even firing off mails to pubs to ask if they are showing certain soccer games. 

I check the analytics of my YouTube page and, I must say, people impress me in how much effort they put into unsubscribing. I lose several subscribers every hour. It’s not a bad thing… the reason I say this is that when I first started the channel, I thought it would be wise to promote it a little to build a subscription base. Unfortunately, the subscriptions grew but the views were low and, as it was promoted to a random audience, the algorithm was uncertain as to which interest group my content appealed. Now I have stopped promotions for several months and the inauthentic subscribers are disappearing in droves. My viewers and subscribers now are mostly those genuinely interested in literature and travel. I will never make any money from it, but I love the process. 

I sit on the balcony to work, read, and write for a little while. 

 


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