The August doldrums bored me.
"It's never usually like this." my colleague says, and turns her back to me while I try to keep busy and control the urge to spend my paid time daydreaming the hours away, trying to keep within "Internet Workplace Guidelines".
August makes way for September, and still the doldrums. My colleague shrugs her shoulders, I am not used to this tediousness, the listless absent workflow.
I cannot sleep, lay awake starting at the ceiling. Playing chess against the Mac, and still losing every time.
I see the faces of people I love on street corners and in crowds, and shake my thoughts away. These people are all left a million miles away, moving through the streets of London and not with me, on this continent. Amelia says it is subconscious, I see them because I am wanting them to be there beside me.
I move, from The Gorgeous to Amelia's and finally, to my own space. Buy new furniture, unpack books and cutlery and put it away. Feel the sadness erode away at me. Meet Bird who teaches me to look differently, to breathe, to find that focus.
After that, it seems easy. Life moves forward so quickly I am momentarily stunned.
"It's never usually like this." my colleague says in October, as we book flights, turn books and struggle to manage more projects than we can handle, whilst our desks pile high with urgent queries.
"I need to leave at 6 tonight," I say on Mondays and Tuesdays before making my way across town, already exhausted. "I have classes tonight."
And now my head feels as if it will explode, the codes for html and xhtml spill out of the instructor's mouth like marbles and bounce around my brain. I struggle to keep up, my mind focussed on getting me to where I need to be, putting the pieces together little by little into place.
Carefully cutting exposed film into 5 frames and stuffing into pockets. Spending hours in the darkroom, waiting patiently for the Kreonite to spit out images. I feel alive again, my mind works differently. My focus returns, and priorites take shape.
I decided to start fixing what was broken, make sense of that pipe dream which drew me back to start again but somehow I underestimated my emotions and the obstacles which keep side swiping me, force me off my route and into unchartered territory every once in a while.
I believe we are always where we are meant to be, where we need to be creating the most value. It is not the obstacle that we are meant to overcome, it is how we perceive that obstacle, and turn it into something precious.
