Many moons ago I managed the editors who worked on Panorama. In those days it was broadcast on a Monday night so the weekends were the busiest and most pressured time for the editors. Being at the end of the production process, editing is where all the pressure ends up coming to a head and to be frank the production team took advantage of the commitment of the editors and I had many run ins with them about the way they worked.
On one particular weekend I was laying roofing felt on our garden hut. I’d been fielding calls all day from work about some Panorama crisis, trying to protect my editors, keep the programme happy, and not get fired in the process. Eventually I lost control and shouted “fuck” at the top of my voice, hurled the hammer I was using spinning across the garden, and literally lost my balance at the top of my ladder.
Not all jobs work to deadlines like this and not all jobs involve temperamental luvvies like TV does, but we all have that moment when we lose it, when the world falls about our ears and we run out of things to do to keep our balance. It can be the loneliest feeling in the world and though rarely life threatening can get our pulse racing, hands sweating, vision blurred, the lot.
But it passes. It always does. No matter how long it takes. We recover our sense of perspective, the situation starts to resolve itself, solutions begin to emerge. We all know this.
It’s remembering it in the heart of the storm that is the hard part.
The Obvious? 