Nine Snowboots
December thoughts
The year is winding down. I’m preparing to go to New Brunswick for my regular Christmas visit with the family; my travel arrangements up there have all been taken care of. I haven’t bothered with Christmas shopping yet; my cash flow was a little tight until my last paycheque came in, and my tolerance for the malls has dropped over the years. Everything costs too much money now.
Getting back to it
It’s now a few weeks into the new year, and I’m back at work. Technically, I’m working from home most of the week thanks to Omicron, and going into the office one day a week to take care of matters that aren’t as easily arranged from my apartment.
Crowded bus season
It’s September again. Crowded bus season. Halifax is a university city, so the buses and streets are teeming with young adults.
Doing what I can
Writing is hard.
Writing is particularly hard when you’re lost in your own head. It’s hard to get much of anything done in that state, but to have to put a coherent string of words together is particularly challenging, especially when you purport to represent your inner self in your writing.
I keep feeling like I'm forgetting something...
My brain is weird sometimes. I guess that's a truism when you're prone to depression, anxiety, or just occupy the space outside optimal mental health or sociability, but lately I'm in a space where I'm craving both rest and distraction at the same time.
Still keeping you all in the loop (if you want to be)
Ever since I started writing back here in November, I feel compelled to keep you all in the loop of what's been going on in my life. It's funny; I've tried private journals and diaries before but never really stuck with them past a few days or up to a half a month, despite the appeal of being able just bleed raw feelings onto the page. Maybe the accountability of posting in public appeals to me more.
A request for personal e-mails
I miss e-mail. I still get plenty of new things filling up my inbox, but just like the box in my apartment lobby, most of what I get is bill notifications, subscriptions, and junk mail. The odd piece of correspondence from another human being slips through on occasion, but not enough for my liking.
Side gig
I'm currently looking for work, so the photography thing hasn't been a big priority for the past few weeks. I haven't really felt motivated to write either, although sometimes I get the urge in the middle of the night, which I usually try to extinguish because my sleeping patterns are messed up enough as it is. Pay-what-you-can photo shoots are still on the table indefinitely, but it's definitely a side-gig for me at best; to be honest, even that doesn't seem like much of a priority compared to finding full-time employment.
Another new year
The beginning of the year always brings reflection, especially on social media; I've seen a lot of posts reflecting on the previous 12 months and tentatively mapping out future plans. I've done posts like that in the past, but I didn't really feel like trying to itemize and summarize (or even make sense of) all that I've done and felt in the last year, at least not in the space of one Facebook post lost among many.
The backlog
This is a three-day weekend for me here in Halifax (Natal Day). Truth be told, I could use the extra time off.
So much for weekly posts
I said I was going to aim for new content every Tuesday, but of course, when you miss one week, then another, and another... I thought the idea of forcing myself to do a weekly post was the discipline I needed to force myself to write, but for the most part my focus has been on a couple of different things I have on my plate: work, photography, my cat, the New York trip, and the business of trying to keep a semblance of responsible adulthood.
Doing It Wrong
For the last few months, I've been a strange combination of busy and mentally blocked. In the summer and fall, I was concentrating on my work for my contract position (which has since ended) while doing a few portrait shoots in my free time, plus a few informal events. I always forget about how time-intensive the editing process is, though, and the combination of an aging computer, general mental fog after work, and a cat that repeatedly jumps on my keyboard means there's sometimes a long delay before I get the shots ready for other eyes to look at.
Why I haven't been blogging, explanation 39
I went about two months without a post on this site; my energy's been all over the place lately, and I often don't have the amount of focus that I feel I need to do anything particularly well. There are a number of things I'm doing or want to be doing these days, some more important than others, but for the last few months I've been short on resources (financially, yes, but more in terms of time and energy) and have been more concerned with maintaining a sort of "status quo" with my life than moving it forward.