Day 33

I have been spending a lot of time in my head the last few weeks. Time is mine and I can shape it as I want to. I am conscious of this diary, of the self imposed need to write everyday, and this forces me to pay attention to my days and think about them. How have I been feeling? What have I done? Those questions sometimes spiral into deeper ones. Ones I rarely write about here because I need more time to process them.

The latest one to enter my consciousness is the value of my work and the growing detachment I feel for my job. It fulfils multiple purposes in my life such as financial stability, job security (something I have never had before), a certain social need. But right now, I don’t care about it. I have voiced this thought before the pandemic spread throughout the world. This job I am in is not a dream job. It is a security I crave, it is a springboard for other things. But what are those other things?

Up until now I have not taken the time to think about it. I have delayed pondering this question too much because it reveals many insecurities. It is far easier to let myself be carried by the flow of everyday life than to dive too deep into my psyche and the reality of what I believe.

I have not tried to do this during this lockdown. In fact, I have often thought about my job in practical terms, about what I miss (a few people mostly), about making sure I retain a certain routine so the return to my desk will be easier. I have reminded myself of my passwords, of the shortcuts I use, of the location of all the tools I need and use in our internal software. But these thoughts have become fewer and fewer with each passing day.

Instead my head is filled with concerns over my creative projects. I look up macro photography and still life. I learn to use Pages to format a zine of sort. I read essays and think about the question they raise. I write compulsively, words pouring out my head so easily it’s sometimes scary.

I think about this diary too. There is a choice in what I record in it and what is left out. I try to be truthful but sometimes I hide some of the reality knowing I am not yet able to write about it. I consider how much my past and my family have been present in my writing in a way they have never been before. I look at the photos I’m adding to the words. They are not good photos but I feel the need to take them and add them. I add a part of my body in each one, feeling the need to put myself in them. I have long been the one to record via the medium of photography and if you leaf through family albums, I slowly disappear. Not so in this diary. I proclaim that I exist.

In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter. I exist amongst millions of other people. My concerns are too often coming from a privileged position (I think about that too), a thought that can cripple me with a feeling of uselessness. But I remind myself that I am not writing this diary for anyone else but me. This diary is, as explained at the top of this page, my way of processing this moment in time. And these are my concerns, at least the ones I feel able to write about now.