June 9–12, 2002 — To be above reproach

The current goal is distraction. Keeping busy. Not lying awake in bed for hours at a time.

And I think I’m doing alright at it, for the most part.

I worked Saturday through Monday, closing each night. I couldn’t get much of anything accomplished before work, and I’d go for a bike ride or a walk after work to kill off my last conscious hours.

And then Tuesday came and I had time to myself. I was glad when Amy visited. We went thrift store shopping and bought Slurpees that we couldn’t finish even though it was very, very warm out. My neck got a bit sunburned and it was a good afternoon.

After thrift store shopping, Johnston joined us and we went to see About A Boy. It was a very good movie, and the two dollars worth of candy that I snuck into the theatre would’ve kept me happy even if the movie hadn’t been as wonderful as everyone had told me to expect it to be.

We walked home in the rain. I wanted to go for a bike ride when I got home, but I couldn’t because my landlord has been yelling at me about my bike already and would get all the more upset if I had the nerve to bring it inside after it had been out in the rain.

Speaking of bikes, when I was home last week I found the first real short story I ever wrote. I was ten when the story was written, and I found two handwritten drafts and the final draft printed with a dot-matrix printer (cover page and all!). The story is told from the perspective of one bike having a conversation with another. When I get a chance, I’m going to type it out and put it online. Just because.

In other news, I’ve had a rather uncharacteristic urge to make new friends over the last couple of weeks. I’m trying to befriend our new neighbours who moved into the basement next door around a month ago (I invited them over for juice this week, but I don’t know if it will be the best of times, what with all the Ottawa kids who will be coming in and out over the next few days), and I’m going to be going to a show with Nathan’s friend Trisha in a couple of weeks. I’m also spending an afternoon with Alex a couple of weekends from now; I’ve seen her at a lot of shows but never talked to her, and Amy talks to her a lot online, so it shouldn’t be too awkward a get-together. (I still worry about not being very good at contributing to the conversation, though, and it’s for reasons like these that I need to start spending more time with people.)

I even almost (but not quite) accepted a coworker’s invitation to go to a bar and watch that boxing match that was all the rage a few days ago. Then I realized that I wouldn’t feel right being inside a bar to watch people punch each other, so I declined. But it was less of a knee-jerk reaction than usual.

Aside from all that, my room is finally clean and I’m starting to feel caught up on a lot of things. New antigreg stuff is finally on the way (including t-shirt sales, probably complete with the ability to pay me via PayPal), and I’m going to try to put all the free time I’ll now have to good use.

One thing I need to put a more active effort into doing is reading a lot more than I have been. I haven’t even been reading on the way to and from work lately — I just stare out the window and memorize the names of streets as the driver calls them out.

I think that’s about it. I have a lot of pins to make, and my heart’s not really in this right now. I’m off to try to read more and to talk to people, maybe even in person. We’ll see how it goes.