About 5:40pm yesterday it dawned on me that I’m on holiday. Or I should say “on holiday”, knowing that the meaning is pretty much useless to me as it involves no travel, no sun, no breaks, nada. Now, the trip I’m lining up to Toronto in November – that will be a holiday – until then I’ll enjoy these few days.

I’m checked out of the office for a full week but trading one long day for another with the opening of Cannibal! The Musical to the public on Wednesday. Having the holiday from work means I get to put time into the last minute advertising, set construction, moving into the theatre, liasing with lighting designer, organising the technical aspects of the production, taking technical rehearsals, dress rehearsals, more meetings than you can shake a stick at while hopefully getting at least one extra hour in bed in the morning.

Even though its not a holiday in the traditional sense of the word I’ll promise you that I’ll still get as much enjoyment out of it. I take a lot of pride in my work and have a great sense of job satisfaction, something I think we all find when working for ourselves and while I leave the office behind for a week I’ll draw the same sense of satisfaction out of The Devious Theatre Company. There’s something to be said to taking to the stage and performing in front of an audience – whether in the business sense where you’re delivering a presentation (last week) or in the arts sense where you’ve got a few hundred people in front of you (says he in absolute hope) enjoying (again in hope) the work that you and the others on your team have created.

When everyone sitting down is enjoying it you can trust that we’re enjoying it more.

Toronto won’t be able to come soon enough for me, or will the first weekend of September (Electric Picnic weekend, me having sold my ticket in order to cut myself off in Sligo for a weekend) as a real holiday will be in dire need come the final curtain next Saturday night.

For now though, my bag is packed and I’m looking forward to a week under 20k lights, wearing some kind of stage makeup, prancing around pretending to build a snowman, getting shot in the face, and all that goes on in between…. and I wouldn’t trade it for any holiday in the sun.