2025 Week 10 & 11: Middle-Class Mischief

What ho! It's already week 11 into the year. I have a Google Sheet with one row for each remaining weekend of the year. The sheet is astonishingly short. 

Significant things that happened over the last fortnight, in no particular order....

I survived my first deadline crunch! After 3 weeks of unbearable tension, knowing I had an impending avalanche of projects but not actually being able to start of any, the work finally came in and I spent a few days just writing and editing. I would not say I had a blast... but I didn't hate every second of my life, either. In all I'm really quite satisfied to get paid a salary and health benefits etc. for this kind of work.

I started online dating. Yeah, I know. I went there. The idea is that, since my last crush went so badly, I should try and meet people who are actually interested in me. Well, it's a start, but the same patterns repeat. Men who chase me turn me off ("ew! so needy") and I wind up chasing skittish types. I'm already sensing another rejection on the horizon... I think I need to be more open to different dynamics.

It's like Joel's favourite song, Desperado:

Now it seems to me some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can't get

I got my eyes fixed! That's huge. After all the pre-test screenings and I was so eager to get my eyes lasered that the doctor was like, "okay, the surgery is empty, you want to do it now?" And next thing I knew, someone was putting numbing eye drops in and I was looking up into heaven at some aurora borealis screensaver. And that was it. Offending bits of cornea removed, never need to feel glasses slipping down my nose again.

I met up with my secondary school gay best friend, for the first time in over 20 years. It was the best time I've had in a while. It's kinda crazy how we are still almost exactly the same people, except now with money and sex.

I had lunch with G and we started talking about the rental space for the co-op. OMG it sounds like it's happening! Following my Casual Poet Library investigations, this fortnight I checked out Azadghei (punk record store, neighbours with a jamming studio and gig venue) and Sides (kink bar). I think the key to running a physical space is to think of it as a limited time only experiment. "Limited time" because good things don't last: either your rent goes up or your building will be sold en bloc. And "experiment" rather than "business". Trying to make money from a physical shop is a lost cause, but it's still worth doing as a testbed for community organising ideas. I feel so energised when I meet people who do things in the fringe, especially things that aren't rational.

Some pictures from the fortnight. These are in regular format because (another big happy thing) I have stopped posting on Instagram, hooray!