not in Baltimore

I've just been to see Garden State with Hamish. It's a good film, but I don't think I got half as much out of it as Hame did. You know how you can be in a conversation and not really feel like part of it? Like the other people talking are all communicating on a level that's missing you somehow? well this was like that - I understood what the film was saying but it wasn't really speaking to me while I think Hame was having his ear chewwed off, figuratively speaking.

It's been fun lately watching my best friend being in love, and this was like turning a lens on it but I couldn't help feeling a little like the part of me that the movie was pitching to is missing at the moment. Not gone, just kinda switched off and diverting to voicemail. I'm busy you see.

Last night I couldn't sleep - that's normal for the first night before work resumes... and not all that unusual in general - left to my own devices for any length of time my body clock shifts, and the waking day for me slews by about four or five hours out from everyone else's in the same timezone. Anyway I was lying awake with all this stuff going round in my head, not the usual late night anxiety crap either but really engaging stuff work stuff, life stuff, creative stuff... busy brain. Fun, though not good for sleeping... but then when I finally managed to get it to shut up and be quiet I had to get up because the silence freaked me out.

A blank page can be kinda scarey when you stop and look at it for too long. That's exactly what 2005 feels like to me at the moment: a vast and inviting/intimidating blank page. I've got some great ideas forming for what's going to go on there but right now they're still just forming, and that promising shapelessness is unsettling when looked at head on. Anyway the film tonight made me realise that for the first time in a long time, I'm really not thinking about love, not much. Realising that reminds me that love's exactly the sort of thing which shows up when you stop looking for it, but then if I think about that too long it starts to feel like I'm baiting fate or something daft so I'm going to go back to all the other stuff and just get on with creating my year.

watch this space (as always)