Monthly Archives: December 2008

A Significant Year

I gen­er­al­ly loathe such arbi­trary mea­sures of time, but the fact of the mat­ter remains that there were some fair­ly impor­tant things that hap­pened in my life with­in the last 365.

I had my first art gallery exhi­bi­tion. So far, I’ve sold 12 pieces, which I’m ecsta­t­ic about. I’ve also since become good friends with the gallery own­ers, Frédéric and Misun.

I start­ed — and fin­ished — pyscho­an­a­lyt­ic ther­a­py. After my crip­pling pan­ic attack exact­ly one year ago, I was encour­aged to seek some help, and this ther­a­py end­ed up going much, much deep­er. I was­n’t scared in my rela­tion­ships because I did­n’t real­ize how much bag­gage I had. But now I know.

I got my sec­ond tat­too. This sig­nif­i­cant thing about this is that it’s prob­a­bly my last tat­too. After the first one, I final­ly feel com­plete (and sym­met­ri­cal).

I got a car. And I’m lov­ing the free­dom. After buy­ing my house and being gain­ful­ly employed, a car was the only thing left. This means I can buy large items, I don’t have to depend on friends to get me places inac­ces­si­ble by bus, I can go home from par­ties when I want, and awe­some road trips out of town.

I kissed her and she kissed me back. Sometimes, there’s noth­ing more impor­tant than hav­ing the right girl kiss you the right way.

I released ver­sion 10.0. This was by far the most pop­u­lar design of my site, being fea­tured at places like Perishable Press’s Web Design Showcase and at the top of Crestock’s 13 Minimalist Blog Designs You Really Should See. Unfortunately, this also meant I high­er pro­file, and more attempts by peo­ple to copy it.

I went through a course of Isotretinoin. This effec­tive­ly end­ed my acne, which became a pret­ty big prob­lem in the last year. It’s a won­der­ful feel­ing to wake up and not have to wor­ry about what my face was going to look like.

I got this let­ter from a read­er. I receive many let­ters and com­ments, which I great­ly appre­ci­ate, but this one real­ly stuck out because some­thing that I cre­at­ed had affect­ed some­one in an intense­ly pos­i­tive way. I hope to be able to do this again some day.

The Return of Water

Well, I have water. And hot water too. I’ve been doing loads of laun­dry and dish­es in the dish­wash­er. Not to men­tion sweet, sweet BMs on a toi­let.

Bathroom ceiling

Bedroom ceiling

But my bath­room and bed­room ceil­ings still look like this. Not to men­tion the coarse dust on every­thing and the uproot­ed fur­ni­ture. I had sev­er­al entries with pic­tures to post, but my colour-cal­i­brat­ed mon­i­tors are sit­ting in the spare room. I have no idea when the con­trac­tor is going to be back to get every­thing dirty again. Otherwise, I’d do some clean­ing.

Either the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny is on hol­i­day (which con­tra­dicts what the work­er said), or they’re dodg­ing me, because I haven’t been able to get a hold of any­one for days now. I’m stuck in lim­bo here, lit­er­al­ly liv­ing in the liv­ing room (what a fit­ting name). It’s left me rather sick and unmo­ti­vat­ed.

Pull Over

When it’s 2:30 in the morn­ing and there are no oth­er cars on the road, I try to time my speed with the red lights so that I nev­er have to come to a com­plete stop. On approach­ing an inter­sec­tion less than a kilo­me­ter from home yes­ter­day, I suc­cess­ful­ly did so, and start­ed accel­er­at­ing again when the light turned green.

Then I noticed a police car dri­ving in the oppo­site direc­tion do a U‑turn and start tail­ing me. In my head, I’m hop­ing he pulls me over. I’m in no rush to be any­where, I’ve done absolute­ly noth­ing wrong, and I want some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for every time I’ve dri­ven fum­bled for my wal­let in the dark before dri­ving her home in my paja­mas, on the off-chance that this may hap­pen. Besides, I’d nev­er been pulled over before, I want to know what to expect.

After a moment, his lights go on.

Continue read­ing “Pull Over”…

Holiday Hell

Nightmare. The word almost every­one has been using to describe this hot water sit­u­a­tion. From my friends and cowork­ers, to the plumb­ing tech­ni­cians, to the sales reps, to the con­trac­tors.

When the con­trac­tor came over to make holes in my ceil­ing, he brushed against a pipe that went to the hot water tank, and since it was almost rust­ed com­plete­ly through, it snapped and start­ed leak­ing. Water shoots out of the hole any time I turn the water on, so I’ve had to shut off the main valve. Now I have no water. I can’t wash my hands, I can’t go to the bath­room.

The exhaust pipe that goes to my fur­nace isn’t up to code any­more either, so even if I get all this work done on the house, my ceil­ing would have to be ripped up again when the fur­nace goes. And since mine is 12-years-old and rat­ed for 15 years, it could die on me as soon as three years (or soon­er). So I’ll be get­ting the fur­nace pipe replaced too, which essen­tial­ly dou­bles my pipe instal­la­tion costs.

In addi­tion to mov­ing as much fur­ni­ture out of my room as pos­si­ble into my guest room (there­by rob­bing me of my pho­to stu­dio, Tai Chi prac­tice area, bed­room, and main com­put­er), I’ll have to cov­er the remain­ing things in sheets to pro­tect them from the dust. When the pip­ing is all replaced1, the con­trac­tor needs to come in and patch up the holes, scrape all the stip­ple off my ceil­ing, respray the stip­ple on, and repaint it. I don’t even have an esti­mate of how much that’s going to cost.

The house is my one area of sta­bil­i­ty. Where I retreat to when every­thing else is falling apart. The one place I need to be con­stant. I won’t feel set­tled until it’s all been resolved.

And to think that I was look­ing for­ward to the hol­i­days. I was pic­tur­ing myself enjoy­ing my well-earned time off, eat­ing bacon and eggs, play­ing a few games, and start­ing some new projects.

How far away the image seems now.

  1. And with luck, they won’t refuse to do the job because they don’t have enough clear­ance. [↩]

Life Is Pain

Hand spot

Sometimes, you stab your­self in the hand with a point, but it’s not sharp enough to break the skin.

Sometimes, the blood comes to the sur­face, and this is as much of your­self as you can show the world.

Sometimes, the pave­ment is cov­ered in snow out­side, and you can dri­ve over 100kph in one spot before the trac­tion kicks in.

Sometimes, you scare your­self with your reck­less­ness.

Sometimes, you real­ize that life is pain.

Sometimes, you have noth­ing left but numb­ness and resolve.