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Description
Week 13 of my '52 Self-Portraits in a Year' challenge.

Note: I do not write this for pity or to complain. I write this because, as an artist, I document and exploit difficult times in hope of making something out of it. These are just some dis-jointed thoughts from my day.

When my alarm went off this morning I lay very still for a minute. Remarkably, my mind was even still. So unfamiliar was this silence in my head that my dazed, sleep-deprived brain supplied an explanation: 'I must not have anything in common with myself.'

An interesting statement to begin the day on.

I sat on the train, head resting against the window. A teenage boy walked along the platform, running his fingers along the side of the carriage, stroking my face through the glass, absent-mindedly: a curiously intimate gesture, thoughtlessly delivered.

At the clinic I opened letters. 'Medicine is still the gentleman's sport', I thought to myself, skimming the strangely formal words: 'Dear .... Thank you very much for recommending .... to me for treatment. She is a forty-two year old woman suffering from....' All such beautiful, polite language. Cards reading 'with compliments', written in swirly letters, looking like wedding invitations.

There was no work for me. They over-estimated how much they had to do. My day ended at 1. Three hours of travel. Four hours of work. And tomorrow canceled. This week I have made approximately $90.

I hate the feeling of trying not to cry on the train, looking around to see if anyone has noticed. Feeling helpless. Back to resumes.

Yesterday I wrote down all the theatre projects I currently have in my head. All seven of them. No wonder I am paralysed! I am being pulling in too many directions and pressed down by the weight of my job anxiety. It is an incredibly isolating thing, having nowhere to be. There are four people I talk to regularly: housemate, boyfriend, mother and Alice. All others have their own lives and places they need to be. Our paths don't cross. I wish they would. Panic leaves my mouth dry and robs me of sleep, confidence and colour.

I washed my hair at 3pm for no other reason than I needed the scalp massage: it felt as if I was letting the breeze into my head. I sung 'Dear Prudence' to myself in the shower and cried a little. I concentrated on slowing my haggard breathing. 'One day this will just be a memory, floating in the rhelms of cyber-space,' I told myself.

I photographed myself in the garden at twilight, hair still wet from the shower, skin still tender from the cry, wearing the pajama top I somehow acquired in February. I think I accidentally stole it off an actor during the Fringe Festival.

Description
Week 13 of my '52 Self-Portraits in a Year' challenge.

Note: I do not write this for pity or to complain. I write this because, as an artist, I document and exploit difficult times in hope of making something out of it. These are just some dis-jointed thoughts from my day.

When my alarm went off this morning I lay very still for a minute. Remarkably, my mind was even still. So unfamiliar was this silence in my head that my dazed, sleep-deprived brain supplied an explanation: 'I must not have anything in common with myself.'

An interesting statement to begin the day on.

I sat on the train, head resting against the window. A teenage boy walked along the platform, running his fingers along the side of the carriage, stroking my face through the glass, absent-mindedly: a curiously intimate gesture, thoughtlessly delivered.

At the clinic I opened letters. 'Medicine is still the gentleman's sport', I thought to myself, skimming the strangely formal words: 'Dear .... Thank you very much for recommending .... to me for treatment. She is a forty-two year old woman suffering from....' All such beautiful, polite language. Cards reading 'with compliments', written in swirly letters, looking like wedding invitations.

There was no work for me. They over-estimated how much they had to do. My day ended at 1. Three hours of travel. Four hours of work. And tomorrow canceled. This week I have made approximately $90.

I hate the feeling of trying not to cry on the train, looking around to see if anyone has noticed. Feeling helpless. Back to resumes.

Yesterday I wrote down all the theatre projects I currently have in my head. All seven of them. No wonder I am paralysed! I am being pulling in too many directions and pressed down by the weight of my job anxiety. It is an incredibly isolating thing, having nowhere to be. There are four people I talk to regularly: housemate, boyfriend, mother and Alice. All others have their own lives and places they need to be. Our paths don't cross. I wish they would. Panic leaves my mouth dry and robs me of sleep, confidence and colour.

I washed my hair at 3pm for no other reason than I needed the scalp massage: it felt as if I was letting the breeze into my head. I sung 'Dear Prudence' to myself in the shower and cried a little. I concentrated on slowing my haggard breathing. 'One day this will just be a memory, floating in the rhelms of cyber-space,' I told myself.

I photographed myself in the garden at twilight, hair still wet from the shower, skin still tender from the cry, wearing the pajama top I somehow acquired in February. I think I accidentally stole it off an actor during the Fringe Festival.