When you work for a range of clients and do lots of different things (like I do), it's often referred to pompously as a "portfolio career".

To me, it feels much more like the contestants on The Generation Game trying to spin lots of plates at the same time - and prevent them crashing to the ground.

I remember the Bruce Forsyth version from the mid-1970s (when Saturday night light entertainment was in its golden age, blah, blah) - but plate-spinning has popped up through the years and all different presenters have had a go. I didn't even know Mel and Sue had presented a version 5 years ago, but Saturday night TV isn't really my thing now.

Anyhow, the principle remains the same. An expert shows (expertly) how to spin lots of plates simultaneously through careful but speedy wrist action - then the hapless contestants give it a go and the plates crash to the ground. The audience laughs.

It's interesting to see on the Mel and Sue video that the contestants (and presenters) wear goggles now. I wonder if there were any letters from outraged gammons about elf n' safety gorn mad, innit?

I digress.

Having a "portfolio career" in media and events is a bit like plate-spinning. You can never quite predict when you will need to spin 4 or 5 plates or when that suddenly becomes 10 or 12. However skilled you might be at scheduling your work, it sometimes crowds in and you're up at the crack of dawn and still catching up with emails late at night.

This month has taken plate-spinning to new extremes. It's been my busiest month since I set up on my own in the long-ago summer of 2009, when Labour was still in power at Westminster.

There have been several media training sessions for a university and numerous legal podcasts. An awards programme I work with has sped towards its entry deadline (my day has been starting with an alphabetical Twitter countdown) and I've been working on an election manifesto for the forestry industry.

I also hosted a webinar on decarbonising the built environment (which is very difficult - decarbonising the built environment, not hosting a webinar - although that's never as easy as some people think). Sorry, more digression....

There was a full-day online event for another legal body - and numerous interviews about data, with very lovely and fascinating people. And at the very end of the month (aka today), the first quarterly Data Capital supplement came out in The Scotsman, which involved a lot of writing and organising.

There was lots of other stuff too, but you're bored by now. So what's my point?

On the positive side, no spinning plates were damaged during the completion of these tasks - but (there's always a but)......

Towards the end of the month, I was mentally exhausted. I had managed the work successfully, and I'm pretty sure I delivered a high-quality service to all my clients. I can't do anything else - I know when I'm not doing something well, or I'm not on top of the details, and I hate it. That's what really stresses me and causes plates to smash.

They didn't smash, but my mental exhaustion spilled over into physical exhaustion. As an antidote to over-work, I had been over-exercising too and trying to cram in as many social events as possible.

Last weekend, I hit the wall and had a few nights where I woke up feeling really shitty. Sore throat, sore head, just generally rubbish. (Yes, I've tested every day and no, it wasn't/isn't).

I'm feeling OK now - not brilliant, but better. So what's the moral of the story? I guess it's that it's brilliant to spin plates successfully - and to avoid breakages - but make sure it's not you that crashes to the ground.

It's not been so bad; I've just had a few days of feeling a bit washed-out and a few nights of poor sleep. My workload is more manageable in April and I'm actually going away for a couple of days.

But there's still a lot of plate-spinning to come, and I know I need to be better at saying "No, sorry, I can't manage that at the moment...." or recommending someone else instead.

And maybe I should step away more often from work and walk my dogs, slowly and aimlessly - or perhaps watch some clips from classic TV game shows.

_{Image: © Henrik Bothe}