Account of an unremarkable day

I resolved not to turn on the television this morning. Breakfast television is an addiction which brings little pleasure, but narrows my world. To be sucked into the boredom of ABC News Breakfast (which has made even the bright Karina Carvalho dull) or into the inane banter of Channels 7 and 9 is to start the day with a sense that the world is less than it actually is. I did something else as I ate breakfast, or at least I think I did; I can’t actually remember.

Continuing my virtuous day, I rode my bike along the river for half an hour. I remember thinking the inevitable thought I often get, that exercise, like vitamin supplements, is unnatural and shows something is wrong with the way we live. Or maybe it was more existential: despite this beautiful day – which I promise you dear reader even gloomy me enjoyed – I am riding to an arbitrary point only to turn around and come back. There is a kind of futility in it, or else a kind of extravagance.

Surely one of the daily challenges of a sensitive person at work is the infectious vibes which go through the air. I catch everyone’s hostility or panic or sadness. And this is partly why work usually exhausts me. I thought today was going to be full of stress vibes, but it wasn’t, to my relief.

An old acquaintance stopped by my library; I hadn’t seen him in ten years. This happens often enough in the place I work. I live in the past a lot. Meeting people I once knew reanimates the past. It is, so often, difficult to give an account of intervening years.

And there we have four thoughts of this unremarkable day, recorded for once because blogs which freeze are sad, and my keyboard has gone rusty. Or not; I have been writing,  squeezing out of my soul 1000 new words on the novel a couple of times a week, and have nothing else to say, until I force myself.

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