The Day Dreamer

By profession, I’m an organiser. As a film production manager, I plan everyone else’s lives and make sure they all know where to be and when, and that they have the tools to do their jobs. I have to be on top of everything all the time, keeping all those plates spinning, because if I drop one the repercussions could be enormous and costly.

How did I ever land up in this job?
Because I'm really a ditzy blonde, just like you see in the movies. Though I’m sadly a lot less glamorous and a lot less organised than Alicia Silverstone in Clueless.

I’ve been told I’m actually quite good at the day job. Perhaps that’s because I’m over-conscientious. I’m so scared of failing that I work extra hard to get it right. But exactly because I do it at work for 9 to 10 hours of every day (and sometimes more) I’m the complete opposite in my personal life. As though the day job gets all the energy and effort, and there’s nothing left for my home life.

In school, I was the kid forever staring out the window, lost in daydreams. These days, I’m the mother who might actually forget to pick up the kids from school because I got side-tracked by a project and simply forgot. When I still had a safe local library to borrow books from, I was the person who always had to pay hefty fines because I forgot to get the books back on time. I’m also the moron who only checked if my passport was still valid when I arrived at the airport for a holiday that had been planned months in advance. (It wasn’t, and that’s a whole other story. Maybe one day you’ll read about it in one of my novels).

So when I read stories in which the hero does absolutely everything for the heroine, from buying her clothes and shoes, to booking romantic dinners or private planes, I’m in love! The feminist in me doesn’t stand a chance against the fantasy of a man who can pick up his own phone to organise flowers (or his own dry cleaning), who can run a bubble bath for the heroine, and who can even pay his own bills without someone else’s help.

What heroic characteristics do you admire, and why?