I’m cur­rently on autopi­lot. Doing with­out think­ing, and just being.

It’s a strange feel­ing because I’ve been try­ing to get to this level where I’m no longer con­scious of try­ing to be at this level¹. It’s a recur­sive night­mare. But now that I’ve been here for a few days, I’m not sure if I like it. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m not used to it, because I feel like I’m miss­ing some­thing, or because I feel way too overstimulated.

I tried to sched­ule a day of rest, aka me time, aka her­mi­tiz­ing in my house, in between every event, but that didn’t work out. I won’t have a sin­gle day to myself until the 3rd of January. I was hop­ing for a hol­i­day where I could sit and do noth­ing for two days in a row, just so it’d be like a long week­end at least. I’ve been try­ing to cel­e­brate because I fin­ished my con­tracts early, but I sup­pose these last few days have been enough of a treat, even if it’s left me with­out any time to with­draw and reflect.

One day I woke up at Darren’s house, went down­stairs, turned on the TV, and Serendipity had just started. I remem­ber watch­ing this generic hol­i­day dri­vel set in a New York Christmas at Vicky’s house back when I was in uni­ver­sity. It was def­i­nitely Christmas back then cause I was back home in Toronto, before my par­ents divorced, and we went to house par­ties as a fam­ily. It was it’s own lit­tle serendip­i­tous sign, remind­ing me the hol­i­days were here, and I should take it all in for a second.

1. Croupier, star­ring Clive Owen, is com­pletely based on this idea. Go see it. [↑]

It’s been busy. Side work is going well, and I try to do as much as I can on week­nights so I can have my week­ends free.

It’s made for a rather hec­tic sched­ule, which is a wel­come dis­trac­tion at the moment. I feel great for being pro­duc­tive, and great for being able to relax. Time is fly­ing. I can’t believe it’s past the mid­dle of September already.

I use to bring my cam­eras with me every­where, but now I find I’m tak­ing fewer pic­tures. I want to be less of an observer/documentalist and more of a par­tic­i­pa­tor lately. I don’t want to miss out on liv­ing from wor­ry­ing if I’m cap­tur­ing every­thing as best as possible.

One of the things that’s helped me main­tain my pro­duc­tiv­ity is Things for my iPhone, which gives lit­tle alert badges on the things that are due. It’s a great moti­va­tor when you want to clear the alerts from your home screen.

If it hasn’t been painfully obvi­ous already, I’ve been busy. Even though it’s only been four days since my last entry, I think that’s the longest I’ve ever gone with­out writ­ing since my month-long hia­tus back in 2006. There are so many thoughts I have been putting in the back of my head to write down, so many pho­tos I have yet to work on and post.

The big project is the house show on Saturday. This week I’m get­ting things ready: clean­ing; buy­ing ice, ice cream, and top­pings for the ice cream bar, cups, spoons; mov­ing fur­ni­ture; cre­at­ing playlists for the lounge time before the show; orga­niz­ing food and sleep­ing arrange­ments for the artists; and prepar­ing to cap­ture the whole ideal in pic­ture and video.

I think I’ll be able to breathe again some time in mid August. Until then, I’m work­ing away hap­pily, and learn­ing to pri­or­i­tize instead of doing what I feel like.

But even then, I don’t think I’ll want to stop. I’m quite enjoy­ing these projects, or, should I say, fin­ish­ing them because it means I’m pro­duc­tive, and there doesn’t seem to be any­thing more sat­is­fy­ing at the moment. I haven’t sat down and lost myself in a game in a while, which is strange for me. And even stranger that I’m not jonesing, as it used to be my favourite pas­time, and the only one that would relax me. Most of my relax­ation time now comes in lit­tle doses of quick iPhone games.

I like being busy.

But we’ll see how long that lasts.

So the next two weeks are:

• a walk by the river with Frédéric, Misun, and their two boys
• four Tai Chi classes
• a hair­cut with Jeff
• table ten­nis with Dan at the uni­ver­sity, then back to my place to watch Constantine
• Victoria Day long weekend
• a tat­too appointment
• a ses­sion with the therapist
• lunch and a movie with Aaron

Not includ­ing the work I need to do on my lat­est photo project for the next show. I’m also sup­posed to catch up with Naveed at some point in there; he’s hav­ing a pool party for his lat­est invest­ment prop­erty. I got us some cig­ars because he’s a new father, which I’ll have to do for Aaron as well, since his first (a boy) is on the way.

Busyness seems to come all at once, leav­ing me bewil­dered. Never a bit here and there.

Then all of a sud­den, I’m alone for days at a time, won­der­ing what hap­pened and where every­one went. It’s a strange flux that goes from one extreme to the other.

The goal becomes a bal­ance of both. That way, the soli­tude is a wel­come change from the over­stim­u­la­tion and vice-versa.