Log

2540F

I find ordinary days too constricting and days that are out of the ordinary too annoying. I do find most days annoying, really, but for varied and contradicting reasons.

I take my ADHD medication after breakfast and soon the focus kicks in. There is no clear feeling to when the effect starts, just a general sense of wanting to find something to do. Even at baseline I have a strong drive to constantly be doing something, let alone with the meds. On days that are out of the routine, this new sense of focus needs to find something to, well, focus on. Without work and clear projects and early appointments breathing down my neck there is nothing obvious to engage myself with.

I don’t think I know how to relax, how to just be, to flow through a day, following the natural rythm of meals and dog walks. Some days the framework is there and I can rely on that to get to the middle parts of the day where I can focus on work or a project. Those days are best. Other times there is no framework but there is a huge important event I really care about early in the day, and that puts me in gear to get to that.

The problem is with days that are kind of relaxed, with some appointments in the afternoon, so I need to build up my own framework to get me ready to go by 2pm. These days are toughest, because I feel like the day is open, and I can dig into a project or just faff about, but it really isn’t like that. To be out the door by 2pm, there is a whole sequence of steps that are opaque to me. When to shower, when to eat, when to walk the dog before I leave? None of this is given, and I can’t rely on my internal sense of when I’d want to do these things.
All of it needs to be planned out because they are all time consuming steps that are required and the 2pm limit is too fixed and too early to allow for much flexibility. Things need to be happening, but it doesn’t feel like a morning rush. Without the motivation/stress of “shit, I’ll be late”, it’s hard to use getting ready as the focus of my meds-supported need to act, so my brain finds some random thing to latch onto.

I’m not sure how to use this understanding to better prepare for days like this, but it feels nice just to understand what’s happening a little better.

Well, anyways.

2537F

There is a certain feeling that I tend to like in pictures, mine and of others. I couldn’t really pin it to a single emotion, althought it is certainly about emotion. There is an element of dissonance, of awkwardness to it. I like pictures that look like I just walked in on someone doing something not meant for me to see. It doesn’t have to be embarassing, often it’s tender, honest in that soft, simple, bumbling human kind of way. Drama, strength, beauty, character are never as interesting as those private moments of people being people, not playing any kind of role.

It’s an awkward position to be in, liking this type of intimacy in photography. There is no clear way to create the situation to photograph someone as they’re being themselves. It’s not something you can orchestrate too easily. What you can do is being bold, being almost shameless in raising the camera just as someone locks eyes with you, only just realising they are not alone, they are being seen.

Well, anyways.

2536F

It has been a while again. I have been through a few deep rabbit holes in the past few weeks. My job fell apart, then reintegrated, then I got offered another job. All of it exhausting, none of it very interesting.

With the new job I expect to move into soon, I am switching back to a thinking-and-connecting role. I’ll need to conduct more meetings, take more notes, produce more documents, think more about systems and projects. This switch plus the (hopefully) accompanying relative financial stability means I’m thinking about switching up my tools again.

The move to an IT/infrastructure role pushed me towards text based, terminal based, hacker-ish tooling. This coincided with my last iPad breaking and not having the means to replace it. So no “casual thinking” device, only laptops. With the current move, it’d make sense to go back to the more visual, more intuitive, less code and more thought based workflow I used to work with.

It’s very late and I’m not thinking clearly anymore, but I do think the series of rabbitholes and the accompanying wired-anxious mood I’ve been in comes partly from the tools I use and the way they frame my thinking.

So, back to visual, back to casual, lightweight, back to the iPad, maybe.

Well, anyways.