Help Help Struggle Struggle

I work a lot. I wouldn’t say that I’m a workaholic but I love what I do and hard work is good for my constitution. I have two jobs so two-day weekends are a bit of a rare thing for me unless I leave town. This weekend, however, I had two whole days to do whatever I wanted. I think I may have had a little too much fun on Saturday night because Sunday was an absolute write-off. Today however, was a different story. Three cheers for a holiday Monday.

I woke up this morning to the sound of ships’ whistles blowing and decided to have a little play-date with myself and spend the day out in the world. I slipped into some comfy clothes and my oldest pair of sneakers, packed a lunch, grabbed a book and an umbrella and sauntered in the general direction of downtown for a little holiday walkabout. I caught up with a couple of friends to shoot the proverbial shit for a while but other than that I was flying solo all day. Luckily, I’m pretty good company. I consumed two rather large mugs of really strong coffee at my favourite coffee shop, sat in the sunshine on the docks and finished the AMAZING book I was reading (Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse in case you were wondering), smoked too many cigarettes (yes I’m still trying to quit, just not today), checked out some live music at the harbour, ate my delicious sandwich and a perfectly ripe nectarine, went for a walk along the water, wrote a quick but charming postcard to a friend who’s been on my mind, mailed said postcard (I always carry stationery & stamps cause you just never know), wandered around the park, watched squirrels and ducks and turtles and seagulls and seaweed, crawled around in a rock & alpine garden to take some lovely photos of very small plants (fingers crossed about their loveliness as I am a luddite who still uses film and every shot is a crapshoot), ate a handful of delicious gummy bears, enjoyed a small downpour from the comfort of my beautiful umbrella, admired the fallen leaves, looked at strange formations of mosses on old stone fences and tried to identify them (with little success, I should really join a bryophyte club), enjoyed the sunshine, found a peacock feather, thought about life and death and evolution and love and taxes (I really, really did)… the list goes on but I think you get the picture!

Now look-see, here’s the thing; I talk a lot. I enjoy conversing with folks and finding out what makes them (and me) tick. A day spent alone is great but it’s also a bit torturous because in the absence of real live conversations, I talk to people in my head. It’s a bit tricky because I like to capture the authentic voice of my imaginary companions but really, it’s my grey matter doing the heavy lifting so it’s pretty damn subjective. This occasionally gets me into trouble when I can’t remember whether the conversation I had with someone was real or imagined and I’ve actually had to ask friends whether or not they were there for said conversation. It’s like those strangely normal dreams where you dream you’re cooking dinner and can’t find the can opener and then you wake up. (I did dream that the can opener was lost once except a couple days later I was making a salad and the can opener was actually lost. True story! I did eventually find it but the whole situation was strange.)

So yeah, the soundtrack to the play-by-play of my day is a series of conversations taking place in my head which is where the whole bit about life, death and taxes comes in. The problem is that sometimes the things I talk about in my head are things that I would like to write about here at NTC but somehow I can never pick up the thread when I’m sitting in front of the computer hours or days later. It’s like listening to the radio all day and then trying to remember every song you heard in order. Yes, I could try and write it down but have you ever tried to write down the lyrics to a song while it’s playing on the radio? It just doesn’t flow. So I’m sitting here, telling you about my great day. I remember sitting on a bench in the park, watching the sun setting through the willow trees and tuning in to whatever conversation I was having with myself and thinking “Oh! Brilliant! You have to go home and write about this for New Town.” I have no idea what I was thinking, literally.