Doing Absolutely Nothing and Everything Else

time skips through my winter hols

*A number of the events mentioned were spread out over a couple of months, but I’m only now putting pen to metaphorical paper; thoughts to coherent words. They’re just dated as I’ve written them. It feels nice to accumulate a collection of writings before publishing anything.

8/6
You know it’s winter in Melbourne when you find yourself spinning around in the shower like a shawarma spit trying to warm up.

29/6
The mid winter gloom is settling in, where opening the curtains and keeping them shut barely makes a difference to my dampened spirits. Why do people take seasonal affective disorder so seriously when everyone I talk to is going through the same symptoms? We weren’t made to be holed up in small stuffy rooms, to work the daily grind until our finger joints are worn sore, eyes red raw & back hunched over. The poor ventilation doesn’t help. Everywhere I go, someone’s got the sniffles.

30/6
I’ve been focusing on being grateful for what I have, and living in the moment: It’s the [6th of July] 2024, I’m here, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. I want to live everyday like I’m still in kindergarten – to focus on what I’m doing, when I’ve assigned time to do it, with the laser-minded determination of a preschooler. To be so in the moment that half an hour mixing potions in a sandpit can feel like an entire afternoon. To find joy in the simplest parts of being alive. To stop and catch the raindrops on a gloomy winter’s day.

1/7
Somehow, it’s July already. Time moves fast when you’re keeping busy. I grew obsessed with a guy for 10 business days (*not accurate, but it’s subjectively funnier to say). I can’t keep my head on straight. There’s logical processing happening somewhere in my brain, but it’s all obscured by a haze of whatever heart-fluttering thing he’s done lately. I swear I can see his pupils dilate when he looks at me (blown wide, with just a ring of colour drowning in black). I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s hard to think straight.
“Every time I come into the city, you’re all that I can see.” (like a blinkered horse, but romantically)

1/7
Today’s good – do absolutely nothing for as long as possible (no screens; reading, cleaning, household chores) until I can’t take it anymore. Productivity is bred from boredom. I should really revise some of my sem1 subject content before I don’t have time to.

There’s something comforting about writing first thing in the morning – the smell of the greasy metallic ballpoint, the ASMR of the pen on textured-paper vibrating through your finger pads. Sometimes it’s so quiet you can almost feel every grain of wood pulp.

4/7
“As June runs into warm July, I think of little else but you” – Wendy Cope.
My internal monologue is starting to sound like you. You’re suffused into every pore of my being, before I’ve even said yes to dating you. It’s still not enough.

4/7
It didn’t work out. It seems some things are doomed from the very beginning.

In a state of idleness for another two weeks and glad for it,
Pepper