Losing Track

Today I experienced a feeling like that when you check the time and are shocked to realise how many hours have passed—except it was a matter of how many days had passed. It was a little scary. I had totally lost track.

I’ve taken some online downtime this last couple of weeks. I’ve learned to recognise the point at which it becomes necessary to filter the amount of data coming in at me. When it begins to feel like a bombardment, I know it’s time to put up the blackout screen, like grabbing a pair of shades when the sun gets too bright.

I don’t seem to struggle processing discrete chunks of information. The problems come when there is too much at once. My systems get overloaded and start shutting down. It’s a horrible thought but I’m like Microsoft Windows. I can’t run too many applications at the same time without grinding to a halt. A soft reboot is then to be preferred to a crash.

I’m fine as long as I’m focussed on one thing. Writing is perfect because I can live for a while in a small world of my own creation, in control of the inputs, the words on the page providing continuity from one day to another, my notebook serving as a better memory than I’ve ever had. That’s been my escape this last few weeks. A story emerged out of nowhere and suddenly demanded my full attention. It’s hard for me to tell now whether that was a cause or an effect of me retreating into my bubble.

If I like to think that I have a say over the inputs, I’m not so sure I have much control over the output. It increasingly feels like the story is using me to get itself written. I wish I felt more capable to the task. I take the responsibility seriously—which is perhaps why the process is so slow. And I’m finding that the simpler the story—the fewer the number of words that the story dictates its length should be—the more time it takes. I appreciate now why the haiku is perhaps the hardest literary form to master.

I have made a promise to myself to keep taking my daily portrait. It continues to serve to be a form of therapy as well as a photography project. I feel like I need that tick in the box for each passing day as a stamp of validation, especially on days when it feels like there are no other boxes to tick. I recently passed my six year anniversary. May I offer a belated thank-you to all of you who stopped by and said such nice things. Apologies for not getting back to you. I can assure you that your words, and all the love, mean a very great deal to me.