step-ball-change and a pirouette

1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
got my braces off, was unemployed for four months, applied and was accepted for a job with a major corporation, stopped going home for three to five day stretches, went to the Yukon for a day on a press junket, went to Edmonton for a weekend for work, got drunk with my counterparts at another university, went to/covered the Olympics, got a real press pass for the Paralympics, went on a five-day bender, made plans to leave this city, agreed to shoot multiple weddings, housesat, kissed someone I knew better than to kiss, made out with smokers (ew), made ice cream.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't know, I don't think I made any. This year, though, yes: get out of debt, reduce the amount of stuff I own, buy only clothing that could be worn in the last 60 years without comment.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes!

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully, no. Close to someone I am close to, though, yes, and that was tough.

5. What countries did you visit?
The US.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
better life balance, a partner, better financial literacy

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
New Year's and Al cuddling, the Olympics from opening to closing and all the events, parties, press conferences, and mf'ing junkets in between; the trip to Edmonton; calling Keegan to tell him he'd won a Johnny; birthday and birthday bender; the last night in Ubyssey Haus; #kmac; quiet times with Lougheed at Benny's; bears, beers, weed and rejected advances with Al, Marielle saying she had cancer, Marielle saying she beat cancer, perogy night, pride with Kristen, ice cream adventures with Kristen, seeing The National, Sufjan, Joanna Newsom

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I survived the Ubyssey, I got my braces off, and I make a damn fine ice cream.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I continue to be unable to motivate myself without a fuckton of caffeine, I lost marks to anxiety, I fucked up at the paper, I'm paying off a $7k visa bill.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Does it count as injury when you're recovering from surgery?

11. What was the best thing you bought?
the ice cream machine, but maybe boots.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
They know who they are.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
They know who they are, too.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Braces, mortgage, debt, camera gear, jaw surgery, plaid shirts.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Music, freedom from braces, working for Apple, getting closer to being totally out.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
The National, "Runaway."

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? happier.
b) thinner or fatter? fatter, which I'm working on.
c) richer or poorer? richer, because current job pays literally twice what the old one did (not hard, mind you.0

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Admitting, working.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Commute, settling.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
At home, getting ready for Boxing Day family gathering.

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?
Love no, like yes, crushes on dudes I work with a little.

22. How many one-night stands?
None.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
Community, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, a little Mad Men. TV's not something I consume a whole lot of anymore.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nobody new.

25. What was the best book you read?
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

honorable mentions: Zero History, Surface Matter, Excession, Momofuku, World Press Photo 2010, Oryx & Crake + The Year of the Flood.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Wooden Sky, James Blake, and Janelle Monae.

27. What did you want and get?
A job, rid of braces, a little more normalcy.

28. What did you want and not get?
A little more freedom, knowledge that things will function at home in my absence.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
Inception by default; I don't think I saw anything else.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
25; it was a production night, so I worked late, then drank and played chatroulette bingo, and then drank some more.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I need to go back to UBC so I can leave it.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
Threadless shirts, cardigans, corduroys, plaid, and selvage denim.

33. What kept you sane?
I'm not really sure.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, mostly.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
A lot of the stuff surrounding the Olympics, homelessness as a whole, and mental/health stuff.

36. Who did you miss?
Most everyone from AUS/ACF. We seem to have grown up and apart.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
More Ubyssey kids: Arshy, Virginie, Micki and David.
A bunch of people from the Gateway, as it were, and even more from The Company.

I spent time getting to know some people a whole lot better; Kristen, Keegan, Kai, and Lucas are all people I appreciate vastly more than I did this time last year.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010:
Save money. Even just a little. It'll come in handy.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
Sorrow found me when I was young
Sorrow waited, sorrow won
Sorrow they put me on the pill
It's in my honey, it's in my milk
— The National, Sorrow

or

We see you trying to
Be something else that
You're not, we think you're nice

The circumstances
Of what I thought, I
Could see it now
I wouldn't be so
I wouldn't feel so
— Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz

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last night, I was apologized to by someone who, during their time on AUS Council, voted to censure me as an ACF Exec after the whole fair shutdown fiasco... in the middle of a dinner party.

I hadn't thought about it in years, aside from thinking it was sort of amusing at the time, but, well, that happened.

(if it wasn't clear: I have no idea how to feel about this.)

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clear cache

not so much a facelift as some lesser surgical refreshing on the front; I didn't toy with structure so much as I fiddled with web fonts and css shadows and altered coloration.

the name is from only skin (but you knew that) and it's likely to change.

that said, it took me something like three and a half years to fiddle with the look of this since the last time I said I didn't like something, so it's perfectly possible that I won't touch this until, um, January 2014.

also: if you're still reading this, leave a comment? I feel like I'm shouting into the dark here (and that's not always a bad thing) but knowing someone's out there would be nice.

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i know your mechanisms

using this as a thing to do instead of working on that thing I wanted to work on.

damnit, old habits.

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things I didn't say today

"the last time I put any real effort towards what you feel are priorities for me I ended up not only wishing I was dead but taking steps to get there, so you'll have to forgive me for not giving a fuck about what you think I should be doing with my life. if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go babysit your daughter now, as she is demanding my attention."

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terrible idea du jour

art show, all from/of/on buses/skytrains/etc.

the name? sic public transit gloria mundi.

I'm terrible, I know.

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swallowing the shine of the sun

it's one of those stupidly gorgeous days in Vancouver, and where I should be shorts-clad and out in the sun I am shorts-clad in a library, sitting next to a stack of books and in front of a computer, where I've spent three hours, now, half-heartedly applying for jobs in between researching someone else's cancer.

there's a photo project coming out of it, too, and I'm more than a little worried about how to approach that whole gong show, but for the time being, I'm going to get my head around one thing at a time.

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got another thing comin' undone

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sorely tempted to play World of Goo instead of typing this up, or even closing the laptop and calling it a night, but it's been a while, and frankly both gaming and sleep are overrated.

I've been job hunting again; neatly stacking experience and skills into little hireability towers before placing them in front of faceless employers on the other end of an ad and waiting to see if their inquiries topple said buildings, or if they remain, wobbly but triumphant and hopefully bearing an offer of work. So far, it's been all crumbled towers (and self-esteem, a little, alongside.) It's maddening, in it's own way, and as I watch the number in my chequing account steadily dwindle, I push up metaphorical sleeves (chalk it up to another disproportionality or just a dislike of fabric on my wrists, I guess, but my sleeves are generally rolled up) and spew resumes, not so much tilting at windmills as much as emulating them.

In the midst of this, I started thinking about all the skills I can't ever put on a resume but have served me well, or the ones I have but wish I didn't. Take, for example, the reading of body language; there's no place on my resume for the phrase "will read how you react to things by the set of your shoulders, where you put your weight, and where you're looking," but it's a thing I can do (and is sort of convenient, to be honest.) More dubious is the whole closet-related skill set; pronoun management, event detail alterations, the occasional obvious checking-out of someone who's uninteresting but convenient, and, of course, the lying. Telling the big ones, the little ones to keep the whole thing plausible, the occasional obvious one as to suppress suspicion as to how unfortunately good you've gotten, quietly fearing the day the center stops holding and the gyre swallows you alive. Worse than those are the ones I barely admit to even myself, the mental equivalent of circling wagons or of a herd of elephants enclosing the vulnerable members inside a circle when predators surface.

I think it's elephants that do that.

Regardless: present me with a rising tide of anxiety or wait until one presents itself, inevitably at some inopportune moment, and it's like someone puts me on autopilot: occupy the head in figuring out what the trigger is, and move quickly enough to satisfy the body and lizard-brain desires for flight. It's my own personal rodeo, but it's inside my head, and falling off isn't an option.

I found myself riding one today on my way to shoot a concert; disembarking from the train and idly wondering if I would make it to the venue in time, and the next thing I know, I'm on the street weaving through a crowd of jersey-wearing Canucks fans; the tunnels and escalators simply erased from memory while things got handled. It's not the first time it's happened on my way to a show in the recent past, and I'm more than a little worried that it won't be the last, which is darkly funny since, well, I'm worrying about an anxiety disorder.

On the upside, I suppose: if I'm in a dark comedy, I'm not in the soap opera. Small favors, right?

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it continues to weird me out that I can string sentences together with a minimum of fuss while I'm walking around, but park me in front of a desk, fingers hovering over home keys, and I am suddenly rudderless, requiring nothing short of miracles to get things out. Is it the notion of moving words through fingers, transforming one set of electrical impulses from inside my head to another set broadcast freely into a cloud of data, with the exchange point being mediated by pure physicality or something else entirely?

stranger, though: this was the first Thursday morning in which I've woken up in my own bed since the end of December.

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You live again
in the shuddering light
of these images
this valediction:
you are running from a rising tide

I have 10000 images to process, but there are words.

soon.

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looking deep inside (but I don't want to look so deep inside yet)

as always, my year-end survey meme thing. Hi.


1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?
went to a conference, got laid off, almost hit a moose, made out in the office, broke things off before they started, shot a book, shot a new year's party, became the photo editor, shot a show in a bank foyer, made a huge mistake, had jaw surgery.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't settle, and eschewed pants, so yeah, I did.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
too many people, too quickly.

5. What countries did you visit?
The US.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Sanity, sig. other, a manageable debt load, a return to UBC.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
New Year's and the walk to Broadway/Granville, NASH Awards Gala, the day I got laid off. Two weeks of solid shooting, new job and then the AGM. Snow on my birthday, the last Kerrisdale Alpha party (I still have a scar), MeFi #10, lantern fest with Marielle, day 1 at the Ubyssey, Imagine, Had a Glass/Olio/Warped all in 28 hours, Pride (oof), jaw surgery, funeral.
Of special note: the day I quit all my non-photography jobs.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I realized that I could make a living off just my wits and photography, I got ahead with freelancing, and I didn't get fired. Or kill myself. That's probably the biggest one.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I continue to be unable to motivate myself without a fuckton of caffeine, I lost marks to anxiety, I fucked up at the paper.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Does it count as injury when you're recovering from surgery?

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Tossup: 2x 580EXII vs 7D.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
They know who they are.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
They know who they are, too.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Braces, mortgage, tuition, camera gear, jaw surgery, pants.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Music, eventual freedom from braces.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?


17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? sadder.
b) thinner or fatter? thinner, which comes of not eating for four days and then being on liquids for the following three weeks.
c) richer or poorer? poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Admitting, working.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Commute, settling.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
At home, sans parents, eating pizza (barely.)

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Love no, like yes.

22. How many one-night stands?
None.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
BSG, Mad Men, Heston's Feasts. TV's not something I consume a whole lot of anymore.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nobody new.

25. What was the best book you read?
Infinite Jest.

honorable mentions: Geek Love, Run, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, How to Eat, and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The xx, Kraftwerk, The Rural Alberta Advantage.

27. What did you want and get?
Material stuff, space, etc.

28. What did you want and not get?
Material stuff, freedom.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
I don't know, I don't think I went to any movies; if I am sitting in one place for 1.5 hours I expect to be somewhere else when I leave my seat.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
24: we ate dinner at Swiss Chalet and then went to the Coppertank and then to the Astoria. It snowed, for some reason.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I need to leave UBC.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Threadless shirts, cardigans, corduroys, and selvage denim.

33. What kept you sane?
I'm not really sure.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Uh, most all of the cast of Battlestar Galactica.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
A lot of the stuff surrounding the Olympics, homelessness as a whole, and mental/health stuff.

36. Who did you miss?
Most everyone from AUS/ACF. We seem to have grown up and apart.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
More Ubyssey kids: Geoff, Michael, Jonny and Ashley W.
Service BC types: Derek, Charmaine, Nina, and Nicole.
People I got to know better: Al Smith, Gord, Justin and Thor.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:
Do it right the first time, save yourself the hassle.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
What do I share?
What do I keep
from all the strangers
who sleep where I sleep
The Strangers by St. Vincent

or: That secret that you know
But don't know how to tell
It fucks with your honor
And it teases your head
Blood Bank by Bon Iver.

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into a white and soundless place

my uncle died. I went to his funeral, and made vague overtures about the whole thing on twitter and tumblr, but didn't really say anything about him, so I figure this is a good a place as any to do it.
I guess, really, there are four vignettes that encapsulate my knowledge of him not just from our uncle/nephew relationship but also what I got told about when my parents decided to tell stories of their childhoods, half a world away. Here goes:

1. He was eighth of ten children, the youngest son (and three years older than my mom). They grew up close, and even after my parents married my dad referred to him, jokingly, as his second father-in-law — even after they emigrated to Canada, my uncle kept tabs on my dad, a little.
2. moving across the world strikes me as a fundamental act of either madness or faith. My parents did it with sponsors shortly after marriage and before their first child, literally starting a new life together. My uncle did it with my aunt, two teenagers and a tween, after 22 years (!) of a stable government job, moving from pre-instability Fiji into mid-90s northern California, with all its attendant madnesses, gaping pits of culture shock, and a whole lot of loved ones who went from a 16-hour flight to a 16-hour drive away. I can't get my head around it.
3. they moved over in 1995, and we visited once or twice a year (and vice versa); not always the most traditional of vacations by any means, I remember one Easter weekend in 1998 or 1999, we piled into the minivan and drove for 18 hours straight to see my uncle for his birthday (two days before mine), stayed for two days, and then drove back. Somewhere in there, my aunt made crab curry with habaneros instead of jalapenos, and we all wept and ate snow crab and regretted it in the morning.
4. He called, pretty much weekly, usually just to ask how everyone was, and what we'd been up to. The timing was such that he usually caught me as I stepped in the door while my parents were out running errands or on the night shift this week and so we got to talking about as frequently as him and my mother did. He was also more supportive of the photo hobby/side gig/gambit/eventual career than my parents were at first, and asked me to email him photos of babytron fairly regularly. (which I did; he met babytron this August when my sister went to visit him well before he took a turn for the worse. I didn't go for fear of missing a production night and cannot adequately relate how much I regret this.)

The last one is why, at the funeral, sleep-deprived, upset, and lacking most of my ability to speak (and all of my ability to speak Hindi) when my mom came over and looked at me, swollen and despondent, she reached for a hug and asked as she broke down again, "who's going to call us now?" I lost it. It's also why I dread phone calls a little because I know who it isn't and who it won't be (no matter how much I want it to change,) and in future, it's why I won't be putting work first for a long time.

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gonna cut someone

man, everything blows this week:

• I sound like a stupid baby; I got a haircut today and enunciating was a fucking ordeal.
• two more editors left the paper. This makes three since the beginning of the year, and this time there are no clear replacements in sight.
• the bits of my face that don't hurt are completely numb, which is terrifying; it's still too early to say if anything is permanent (and I hope none of it is)
• one of my maternal uncles died. I wanted to go see him post-op, but he didn't make it. This was precisely two months (to the day) that my aunt (also maternal) died in Fiji. This is truly something I don't want to come in threes.

the last one makes the rest of them pale in comparison, and it's also why I'm off to California for 36 hours tomorrow. The worryingest bits: I don't look like my passport anymore, I can't talk very well, and there's titanium in my skull now. I hope my doctors notes are enough; I've heard enough about the TSA to be wary.

I've got chemicals; wish me grace (and cue the M83).

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this is honestly just so I can right-click and save as: srsly

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in case it wasn't immediately apparent, this whole surgery thing is ramping up the anxiety; I commented to someone on MSN that I'm looking forward to the end but not the means, since the means keep getting uglier.

[sigh]

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glowing young ruffian(s)

I guess it would have been that funny in the not-irony irony way if it wasn't heartbreaking; standing on a 99, half-drunk, admitting that things were far from ideal, and they'd gotten harder, but that somehow both of us were more worried about the other. Surrounded by strangers who were undoubtedly catching the wrong end of this conversation,¹ and letting the brave faces slip because the effort was painful and we were safe with each other. Hushed tones and averted gazes from us as the sadness we'd been revealing obliquely and in parts came together, were focussed on and then defocussed²; the whole too much to behold. Remembering the discussions we had before I started the effexor about the nature and value of sadness, and the necessity of valleys to make the peaks meaningful. His references to a dark period before we'd met, of thoughts and actions that he didn't regret³ and the ways and means of our shared states.
Off the bus and inside for a pit stop, an offer of bourbon deferred⁴, and then to the bar. Quiet reassurances exchanged, unilateral apologies for multilateral failures, the soft familiar patters of our respective strides. Before stepping in, a half-second to file these thoughts away and to put brave faces back on, blinking at their unfortunate familiarity before diving into the sea of distractions provided by a table full of friends.
It's the dwelling that gets you; in one spot for too long and it's the other kind of head lock, trapped in worst-case scenario planning⁵ and the creeping horror of an impending loss⁶.

What came before: a cancelled concert, a shuffling of plans, a realization that it had been too long, two phone calls, a meeting point and then a meeting. From there, a long and public hug⁷, a walk down to 2nd and then a Canada Line trip up Cambie to 25th; both of us too lost in conversation to steer towards dinner until we decided on a place that was about a block from our starting point. Noodles, dumplings, additions to the party, a trip to Firefly. Large beers in a kitchen, waiting for confirmations, cherries and soba and hobgoblins in said beers, and then a walk to pick up a bicycle, the promise that we'd see you soon, a walk to the bus stop, a saddening of eyes and a slow fade to the airing of our woes.

What came after: suspension, revelry, disbelief that a bar closed at midnight, the houndstooth couch and bourbon manhattans. Three hours of chatter, and my hitting of a wall. I crashed in the den⁸ at 3 and failed to let him sleep while I snuck out at 10 to head back to the job I had been successful in not thinking or talking about. A barrage of text message apologies trailed into ephemera, and then I was back on the clock.

The point, I guess, is that I'm still fairly angry that one of the best people I know and love dearly has to deal with a whole stack of painful nonsense but that being able to at least be there was something I can and will be doing more often. You should join us.


Notes:
1. As if there was a right end.
2. Defocus like a lens; take the edges away and let it fade slowly into nothing. The size obscured, the edges dulled. It's easier to avoid, this way.
3. With effort and as part of a greater no-regrets paradigm.
4. Not refused. Merely deferred.
5. Both of us.
6. Again, both of us.
7. Good hugs are hard to find.
8. During my first tour of the place: "This will be the den. Also, your room when you need it."

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so it turns out that Twitter is a poor venue for self-talk.

excuse me while I try not to freak out over the next ten days.

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snippets

stored for future reference:

spencer: Reasonably well
gerald: aw
gerald: I can't say I mind watching the baby
gerald: we get along
gerald: there are mild adventures
gerald: it's not like I'm having any
gerald: children, I mean
spencer: Currently or ever?
gerald: short-term, certainly
gerald: ever isn't planned
gerald: not opposed, to be honest, but you know... mechanics.
spencer: fair enough. There was just a tone of finality. But there's always surrogates or adoption
gerald: both of which fall under "mechanics" as requiring planning, accomplices, etc
gerald: a hint of madness (and not my regular sort)
gerald: one day, maybe
spencer: Ah, I thought you meant mechanics in the bits and parts sense
gerald: that was the joke
gerald: but there was some truth in there to, unwittingly
spencer: Aha

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racing like a pro

after what can only be described as a series of poor-verging-on-surreal choices, I have survived what I feel to have been my first freelance/photojourno trial by fire.

an approximate schedule:

Thursday, August 13
• 2130 - leave to meet Culture kids at the Lamplighter
• 2215 - get to Lamp, do the rounds, see Kaitlin and Aleks in addition to Culture kids + Lougheed. Shoot the Raccoons and a singer-songwriter that Kaitlin knows.
• 2300 - leave lamp, head to Bourbon
• 2310 - arrive at Bourbon, am blown away by The Heard.
• 2330 - say hi to Abra, wish her a broken leg
• 2335 - say hi to Piper, apparently engender envy of Piper's vocal lesbian fan club.
• 2345 - shoot Piper's set.
• 0005 - see chad, say hello.
• 0025 - leave for red room
• 0045 - party in the red room; it turns out I know four groups of people there (ex-Ubyssey, CiTR, Aleks, and Lougheed).
• 0110 - it's Steve Louie! I like him.
• 0120 - The Clips throw down an amazing farewell set.
• 0210 - we leave the bar.
• 0240 - me and Lougheed catch an N17
• 0310 - back at Ubyssey Haus
• 0320 - bed
• 0715 - up again (!)
• 0747 - miss the 4, get on an 84.
• 0804 - miss a 7, get on a 4.
• 0816 - on the 253 to Park Roral
• 0840 - at LDB at Park Royal
• 0845 - meet James from Had a Glass (v. cute, well-built but so friendly that it's not at all imposing)
• 0900 - start shooting wine bottles
• 0945 - finish shooting wine bottles
• 0955 - London Drugs pit stop.
• 1005 - on a 253 to downtown
• 1030 - coffee #1; venti Pike Place
• 1035 - 44 to Ubyssey Haus
• 1040 - so many emo kids
• 1100 - walk to Ubyssey Haus, check email, tidy up.
• 1110 - half of Haus wakes up; are bewildered to hear about 0715-1100 period of my day.
• 1115 - convalesce, a little.
• 1145 - head to office with Justin
• 1230 - after a little light internet, leave office
• 1300 - Justin picks up a cheque, I say hi to Marielle
• 1315 - Coffee #2 (Jeremy's Blenz: "give me an enormous drip coffee, please.")
• 1330 - part ways with Justin, eat lunch.
• 1400 - make way to site
• 1430 - I'm in and tweeting.
• 1550 - Brokencyde
• 1615 - Bad Religion
• 1645 - Streetlight Manifesto
• 1715 - NOFX
• 1730 - loaf in sun
• 1815 - Alexisonfire
• 1840 - leave site
• 1900 - Ubyssey office
• 2040 - parent pickup
• 2130 - home

inside 24 hours I shot eight bands from two festivals in four venues (and on three stages in one venue) in addition to a trip out to West Vancouver to shoot wine bottles, for a total of three shoots and 1200 frames with a short break for a little under 4 hours of sleep, fuelled only by grim determination, obscene amounts of caffeine, and a sub-par noodle dish from the VIllage.

I feel spectacularly worn out in some ways; my shoulders ache from the weight of my gear, my shins from walking and my elbow will undoubtedly be next. I'm occasionally incoherent from sleep-lack, and I admit to a shorter fuse than usual. Sitting here typing this, showered and full of ice cream, I realize that this is the blissful kind of tired, and that I honestly haven't felt this way since I worked on shows.

It's a good feeling, and I'm glad to have it back.

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welcome, ghosts

given that long-form thoughts stay here, short ones go to twitter, photos go on either on flickr or to facebook, is it any surprise that my impending photoblogs will also go somewhere else entirely?

the recent works blog is coming along, and the portfolio side requires some tweaking to bring the look and feel into alignment, but I think they'll hit the prime time soon.

feel free to comment on the unfinished forms, though.

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