Maybe it’s Animals
If speaking with humans means me being tired and sick…
Begin Again
June 21, 2022
I’ve created an online experience for clients and the platform goes through a complete upgrade leaving me to reformat over two years of full-time work. I’m in the middle of downloading a library and their server fails. I’m ordering food on the app and my phone dies. I’m introducing my cat to raw food and he loses his appetite after a day at the vet, poor baby.
So much of my life seems to be spent starting again, reinstituting, redesigning, re-orchestrating, relocating, renaming, revamping, rejuvenating and reinventing. I take it that’s my specialty – starting over. I’ve done it so many times I’m a natural. In fact, I’m not sure there’s a time it didn’t happen. Even my counselling degree was redesigned halfway through and I had to restart somewhere in the middle all over again!
Anyway, it’s not a big deal. That’s just how it is. And, truth be told, I do like starting. There’s so much oomph in it. I get a fresh page or a pile of pre-designed pages that now need to be sorted through and re-hashed. Finding new images, keeping track of downloads and uploads, text, formatting, hyperlinking, and branding. I could live there if you let me; in the starting of things.
Sorting is also one of my secret loves. As long as it’s not officially my full-time job, I’m all in. I don’t want to be somebody’s managing director responsible for all the crap they can’t figure out. Just let me play in the sorting of my world with my toys and my stuff. Folding, sorting, filing, organising, tying bows and making lists. Oh, what joy!
But then I know the thrill of finishing things too. Of printing out a published work and binding it by hand. Of completing an online experience and offering it for sale. Of setting up appointment types ready to be booked by the hour. Of reinventing a backyard for my furry purry drooly boys to enjoy. Of having prepared spreadsheets for tax time and hard drives for storage. Of coordinating month-long, annual, interactive exhibitions for multiple artmakers to connect with their community at large. All of which have their own ambient ring.
Being asked to choose between them is kind of like saying, “Which is your favourite month?” or “whose season do you like best?”. I’m not sure I can answer those questions with any real clarity. I like all of them for their own reasons; b/c each one is fantastic, each one is perfect, each one has its own beauty and splendour and romance. Doesn’t it?
Can one really prefer Winter over Spring? Or January over June? Isn’t every moment sacred, everywhere? Even the crappy, sappy, wish-you-weren’t-here ones? Or is that just me? Am I really the only one who prefers wherever, whenever, we are right now over some idea of later or before? Hmm.
Tags: personal preference
