My whole "use of blog as cultural recorder" thing has totally failed, I can see, which is unfortunate, because I've engaged in a lot of culture this past ten month period that I would have liked recorded and am now afraid I will forget at a crucial moment. What lies behind this failure to realise such a simple vision?
Crippling fear of how bad my writing is when I'm not being flippant, petty or pedantic is one part; concern that I will have to further justify my opinions to others is another; having better things to do with my time is probably also a factor (or at least makes me sound good.) But having spent a good eight hours today doing nothing I know I should feel it's time to engage my mind in something mildly productive.
Well, a hearty fuck that, I say. When I say I did nothing today, I mean that quite literally; my list of activities today reads as follows: 1. Wake up at 10:30. 2. Get out of bed at 11:16. 3. Go to the bakery and buy sourdough. 4. Eat sourdough and read the (wanky) magazine. 5. Facebook. 6. Bed, again: engage in some hardcore ceiling staring; cannot even bring self to read. 7. Shower. 8. Cancel afternoon tea. 9. Walk to brother's school in searing heat to drop off forgotten items. 10. Return home to eat, finish reading the (wanky) magazine, [non]essential and The Inner West Courier. 11. Watch five episodes of Seinfeld; loaf of sourdough almost finished.
And dear god, it was one of the bed days I've had in weeks. Not for me the alarm clock. Not for me the list of twenty five things to be accomplished and another twenty five looming like shadows just around the corner. Not for me conversations about anything. (I think I have uttered about ten words all day, the most commonly repeated being, "Hello, Rebecca speaking." Sometimes I think I should just quit my job and become my mother's PA.) Not for me getting dressed. (Though I did, eventually, because of adventure into searing heat.) Not for me interactions with human beings.
I can understand why reading that might make someone think I had suddenly contracted a tropical disease or else morphed into somebody far less sociable and alive than my sweet self, the fact is that sometimes your brain just needs to crash. After weeks and weeks and weeks of looking down the barrel of my diary and finding nothing but cordoned off sections of time devoted to this or that worthy endevour (academic acheivement, financial enrichment, cultural engagement, attempted artistic fulfilment) I found myself feeling trapped upon an ever turning wheel that I didn't seem to be controlling. As it's now Novemeber, the wheel will soon slow to a more leisurely pace - the kind of pace one might move at walking alone a picturesque beach, rather than madly sprinting from Eastern Avenue (lecture ran overtime to 12:58) to Woolley (mad lecturer insists on starting at 13:00 precisely.) With three exams still to go, however, I'm still moving at a brisk pace, but I figured if I was going to give myself any chance of getting to the end without a collapsed lung, it was time to take a breather round.
I generally find the world a very interesting place. I think my problem is that sometimes I find it too interesting. So many things to do, and see, and people to meet and spend time with, and events to keep up with, and conversations to be had, and knowledge to be attained, and results to be achieved! And while each of these things is fabulous and entertaining and enriching in isolation, en masse it's just like standing in the middle of a large space while people throw brightly coloured and pleasant smelling objects at you: totally overwhelming and eventually a little repulsive - not to mention totally not conducive to sleep.
And so I find that every now and then I have to take myself off and do a little bit of hibernation - burrow myself away somewhere and give myself permission to do just nothing, to make no lists, to achieve no objectives, to think no thoughts. I have to let myself stare at the ceiling for hours, almost to the point of boredom, to soothe my often overactive mind of the crowd of voices and commands and thoughts that tend to cram in there most of the time. And when I've done that - when I've emptied everything in my head out and let it float around above me, and looked at it a little - I can start to appreciate what a truly dull thing life can get without it. So I start to pack it back in, bit by bit, maybe ordering it better or leaving out anything that was making me truly unhappy - and I get back on the wheel, happier, healthier, and much more likely to make it to the end of the race.
