Dear Diary

The summer slumber has passed, a couple of months ago now, but projects are stuck in neutral. Work continues it’s dominating influence, and the winter rains have settled in.

Excuse me – the new washing machine has just finished attending to the cleaning cloths. The new machine is a larger size so as to better cope with blankets and doonas, and I’ve noticed a concurrent increase in the water bill. Time to change my day-to-day washing practices.

Also new, a gifted second-hand television, larger than any previously owned, larger than the phone screen I’ve been using, still using, to watch TV. A rushed trip to Bunnings to buy more shelves on which to sit it. A necessary reorganisation of the lounge room to make space for it. Still not sure what I’m going to do with the two-seater that I’ve long stopped sitting on. It’s currently in the spare bedroom/junk room/store room – take your pick of moniker.

More overflow. Seeing the lounge room effectively finished, the centre room that is the centre of my non-work life now feels unwieldy and unfunctional. In a different year, I would say its a byproduct of the passing of summer. This year, that new television is clearly the trigger. A clear out of the centre room, a new rug, and a plan to extend the kitchen furniture and function into this space is nearly completd.

Seepage. My work screen is very, very organised. The work that I do requires intense streamlining of onscreen processes. Everything has its place. Muscle memory knows where that place is. The cursor flits and flys across the pixels. With no journey to make or threshold to cross when working from home, that need to be organised stays and the benefits are everywhere, even to the process of making breakfast.

It’s working. Projects are emerging from a subconscious realm. I don’t know how they end up there, perhaps they burrow in to protect themselves and wait for fertile ground, perhaps they are pushed to one side out of a need to preserve a sense of control, this much and no more. Some can’t be hidden; the half dug garden path is very obviously a half dug garden path.

But an organised project may loose the spark that comes from creative flow.

Having now also purchased new shelves for the studio, and tidied everything in there, can I retain it as a space where creative problem solving still reigns?