Or something like it. I have 470 unread messages in my gmail inbox, 299 unread messages on my Facebook account, and I don't know how many read but unanswered messages on my other two email accounts. I have a play to finish in a week, a magazine feature to finish by tomorrow, two unwritten reviews, and two books to finish reading by next week, when I appear at the Melbourne Writer's Festival as Robert Dessaix's interlocutor. And that's only the immediate demands. It's beginning to trickle through, even to me, that this is unsustainable.

I know I swore I would never, ever again complain on this blog (mainly because I then get embarrassed when people ask me if I'm feeling better). This is more by way of a generalised apology to those people - you know who you are - to whom I owe letters, rsvps, and probably apologies of various kinds. My mantra "I can't get to everything" is at present in danger of turning into "I can't get to anything". (OK, I saw three shows last week. I have only written a review of the one I had to do for the Australian - Joanna Murray-Smith's Rockabye, which I enjoyed. I'd like to write about Hoy Polloy's Purgatorio, about which I have a few reservations, but I don't think I'll find the time. And I wouldn't write about Slava's Snow Show in any case, because I was sitting in the gods and only saw the tops of people's heads.)

There are several shows I would, if I were in any sensible state, like to see, and given my present state, probably won't. I realise this generally means that I am mainly seeing mainstream shows, and I'm not very happy about that. Also I seem to have been, despite myself, hijacked by journalism. At the same time, I'm not sure what to do about it. Anyway, if you see a small exploding critic in Williamstown, try to be kind. I'll get over it.