from the island of my bed

work. followed by more work. a bit of study but then it's back to work. and then i forget where i'm at with study and i have to backtrack. and then i work some more.

that's been the pattern of my work/study life these past few months. oh, and there's all that other stuff around flirting and sex with the boss. but i think that's over now. and it's such a relief.

i had a birthday. i'm 34. sometimes i feel much younger than this, but other times i'm 40+. i guess it all evens out. i am what i am.

i cooked dinner for my friends, and it felt like a nice to thing to do, to experience, to share. i felt very satisfied in the circle of people around at this moment. i felt loved. and love.

and then i got sick. a mild flu that makes me want to curl up and sleep for days. with heavy blankets pushing me into the bed, experiencing great warmth. i've been having lots of baths, sweating beneath hot water, melting my muscles. then i climb into bed and sleep for what could be several years.

i've been reassessing my time. nothing new, i know this. but it feels like things are shifting, and maybe i'm becoming more aware of what i want. and what i don't want.

i don't want a boss who only wants to sleep with me. i would rather a boss who is a friend. i thought we had a friendship, but lately the signs tell me otherwise. he likes me, but i'm little more than an ego device for him. someone to feed his needs. and when i don't, he tries his hand at emotional blackmail. i don't need this. i don't even like him sexually. if he wasn't french i probably would never have gone there. or would i?

but i stopped replying to his message and now he seems angry and upset and told me not to come to work today, on his last day, where we were meant to settle things with the project. it all seems very odd. what has he done with my project, my work? and why can't we discuss it like colleagues and not jilted lovers? mostly i can't care. so i won't go into work. i'll just do some study, have a nap, repair myself from this flu.

but a part of me wonders what he's telling others, such as his partner (our boss). potentially i'm being blamed for things. but still, i've not enough energy to care. at least not today.

he's messaging me now on gmail. i'll get to that later.

i've been considering taking a semester off study. stressing about time and that which i've lost already. maybe i need an extra 6 months. although, going back to it this morning, working on my introduction, i'm starting to think that maybe i am selling myself short. i have done quite a bit. though it feels so small. if i count the months and days i've been involved in this project, there seems to be very little to show. but maybe it's not all about the text i have created, but the shifts in thinking i've been undergoing, the reading, the contemplating, the application of theory throughout daily life. maybe the consideration of such things suggests that i have been immersed from day one, and i haven't paused once.

working with theory is strange like that. i feel as though i need a decade to swim in what i want to familiarise myself with, engage in, utilise, build upon. but there is no decade. there is no time. there is work and more work. there's relationships and birthdays and sickness and sex with your boss and ensuing emotional blackmail and a host of other factors that i must contend with on any given day. and maybe to lock myself away from this will make me unable to write anyway, for i will have nothing to fight for or against.

maybe. but i think i might just stick with it for now. i think i just need to contend with my confidence issues and put more trust into my academic abilities. to stop feeling like a fraud would be nice. and this morning, in reading through stuff i've written, there was a glimmer of something. maybe i'm good after all.

quietly active

blogging, like most of my online activities, has all but stopped.

today, someone somewhere connected a cable that will give us home internet again. by next week we'll be online i suppose.

that will be good.

i've saved a lot of time from this. though there has been a slow-building frustration in not being able to access maps, timetables, phone numbers, and the kinds of things that make navigation a little easier.

if i had a connection today i would have emailed work to say i'm working from home. but there's no email, and no access to stuff i might need online. so i came to work.

today was my latest-ever-arrival - i got here after 4pm. it would have been sooner than 4 had my bus not been very very late. instead i arrived when all the decent coffee-venders were shut. so i turned to sugar.

i now share an office with 3 others, one of whom has an assortment of lolly jars on her desk. she proudly services the sugar needs of all staff. my teeth are tingling.

and now, a couple of hours in, it's time to go home.

badness is goodness

pablo is a bad student. he's about to go to lunch. and then he's going shopping. and then he's going for a sexual health check up.

no time for writing today. but maybe, over lunch, he will make a few words. he will go to that sandwich shop in randwick. and then he's likely to eat an almond croissant at the bus stop.

and the breeze will catch in his billowing hair as the bus speeds away.