OH BOO HOO

This week has been awful.

I mean, truly terrible.

But only because I'm a complete mook and can't get my act together. I've basically been working two jobs, because the More4 work has taken way longer than anyone expected. It's been really hard to get publicists and press officers to respond to my request for their news anchors / journalists / pundits and, as you might expect, this is a manically busy time for all of those people, so even when I did get a response, it was usually no.

Meanwhile the people at More4 aren't the easiest to work with, being really vague about what they want and just coming over to New York on Tuesday this week on a whim, despite the fact that I'd only confirmed one interview. So it's all been really stressful.

The booking work has been taking up my entire day all week, so I'd only get to start my development work at about 6.30pm, which has meant I've been working til about 11.30pm each night and am just exhausted.

The worst thing is that I realise that both these jobs are really great opportunities for continuing work when I get back to the UK, so I obviously want to make the best of them but feel like I've not managed to do either one justice and have fallen firmly between two stools.

As you can imagine, I've had no time to either have or be fun this week, as I've been working every evening as well as all day. Max has been characteristically brilliant and even dashed home for lunch on Wednesday as a surprise, when he sensed that things weren't going so well during a phone conversation we had that morning.

That night was the only night off I've had, as I went out for dinner for Oliver's (Max's friend from the Guardian) birthday. It was a very small affair - only Max, me, Fun Zoe (from Screen on the Green) and a jolly Canadian chap called Tom - so I was pleased I went.

Oliver had just flown in from LA on the red eye that morning, so was pretty snoozy, but full of tales of his trip to interview Oliver Stone and Sarah Silverman. I think I should have his job. In fact he's a legend, because before collapsing exhausted on his return that morning, he was kind enough to persuade one of his Guardian colleagues to do an interview for More4 for me.

It was a really fun evening and I really really like Zoe and Oliver (and Tom too, but I don't know him so well) - they're excellent fun. I really hope we see them when we're all back in London, as they're ace. And they're both single, so should get together. Fact.

More4 came to DC today and asked if I could drive them around their various interviews (by then, I'd managed to book lots more people in), but I had to say no because I had to do a full day of development work to make up my 3 days, along with the half-days I've been doing at night. And the half day I'm meant to be doing every week analysing the online activity in the US election for the Lib Dem man back home? That'll just have to wait.

Today was made all the more stressful because yesterday, I was asked by More4 to sort out an outdoor location in DC where they could do their interviews. So I called the Parks Service for permits to film at the waterfront or in the parks and they laughed at the idea that they could turn around a request in such a short amount of time. So I went to recce the roof garden of a handily-located hotel, which looked scuzzy as a whole, but had amazing panoramic views and would look really nice in the confines of a 16x9 camera lens, so no-one would know that it was shoddy-looking just out of shot.

I wasn't 100% sure what the director was looking for because, as with everything else in this assignment, I was given zero guidance, so sent More4 a document with photos and descriptions of the location. But they went ahead and confirmed the place before looking at my document and when they got there this morning were horrified by it being tatty, so had to re-locate, which is the last thing you want on the day of a shoot and I felt rubbish.

Anyway, that's all over with now and I can just concentrate on development work for the next four weeks. And it's really lame of me to make such a meal of working, when I'm really lucky to be given any work while I'm here. I guess I'm just out of practice!