First Weekend after Lockdown 5.0 here in Victoria

Melbourne is getting good at lockdowns. Unfortunately, but fortunately.

We have settled the purchase of our new studio for my architecture practice. We have a permanent home now, and I hope to never deal with a landlord again in this lifetime. Now the disruption and hard work/logistics of dealing with financial institutions to make a commercial purchase is over and done (very frustrating and irritating) I am of a mind to settle into some extracurricular creative activity.

I have a certain number of resources associated with writing and image making that I am keen to explore, and it is quite a while since I took a spin into creative writing, which has been an omission on my part for the last few months. The move of office, the purchase, the associated drain on cashflow are all completely conventional problems to manage, practically comforting in their ordinariness. Not so much first world problems as mundane, completely usual problems for modern individuals fortunate enough to be in a position to acquire property.

Nevertheless, quite distracting. I have neglected personal creativity and focused on just getting through each week, scrimping a bit, saving money where possible and making do (comparatively). In a month or so, we will be past this and all will be running smoothly again.

I have lots of enticing tools that I have acquired recently, despite a lack of time and headspace to use them. One of the most enticing of all is a big tin of watercolour pencils that arrived a few weeks ago. I need to dig out my cloud sketchbook (where is that damn thing?) and take full advantage of my exceptional view of the Western sky over Docklands, and push out some cloud sketches a-la Turner. Inspired by the genius himself, I happily do my little attempts, and they are poor I think but I enjoy doing them. I will do one this afternoon and share it here.

For nine years I have kept a diary in the Day One app, mostly adding images and text to it each day. It chronicles the entire period of my business (we were eight years old last week), and the year before the business was started. Those earlier entries are long, depressing, somewhat desperate and gloomy.

It was dreadful at the previous employer, who shall remain unnamed not through any sense of respect whatsoever but through a reluctance to invoke them in any way. I have moved on. The new business was a financial and many other kinds of emancipation, a liberation. All good.

This has been nice, a little touching of bases with potentially nonexistent readers (for posterity), and note that when the cloud sketch appears in this post you will know that it has been updated.

Black Rock, Victoria, 31 July 2021