I don’t really want to write the journal this week. It’s Wednesday night at a quarter past nine, I’m sitting at the desk in my room and typing away at my laptop. My forty-centimetre diameter tabletop fan is oscillating to my right. As it turns its head towards and then past me, two rooibos tea bag tags hanging from my teapot flutter. My forearms stick to the desk. The long, humid day has left a sweaty residue on my body, and I can feel my skin stretch and pull as I move my fingers over the keys. I didn’t go to gym before work this morning, I can’t remember if it was because I got to bed late or if I didn’t sleep well. In any case, I opted to wake at seven-thirty instead of six-thirty and forfeited my hour of moving weights around. I arrived at work just before nine. I then spent the following nine hours moving chairs, tables and sideboards into the corner of the warehouse I photograph them in, photographing them, and subsequently carrying them away again. I had a good lunch break. Chili con carne. Had a coffee break around four, too. Then I came home to an interview with a potential new housemate. One of my current housemates is moving out this month and returning to Brazil. She didn’t plan to leave so abruptly but was forced to because of some difficulties involving her job here. The surprise, unfortunately, means that we’ve got five days to find someone to rent the room to, or the rest of us have to split the cost. Very exciting. Mercifully, I’ve just received my first paycheck having worked a four-day week (instead of 3), and I should be able to find the money without losing a hand to my bookie if it comes to that. After the housemate interview finished at seven, we conducted another one at around quarter-past. Which was quite irksome, considering the second candidate had said he’d be there at five. He gave only one-word answers to all of our questions and, frankly, made my fellow housemate and I (for two had left by this time in order to attend prior arrangements) feel uncomfortable and unsafe. It’s a no, then. I finally dragged my frame upstairs at twenty-eight to make myself dinner. I watched a series on my laptop to keep me company. Once I’d finished my grub and scrubbed the pan clean, I came downstairs to lay in bed and finish the episode. At about nine my fingers began to itch with the feeling that if I did not take advantage of what little free time I had remaining, that the journal wouldn’t get done this week. Which, brings us all the way back to where we started. Tired and sweaty, reluctant to write.
And yet, writing all the same. I will share with all of you what I have as of yet confided in only a few: I have often considered stopping Jeremy’s Journal. Especially in the last few months. Between the various massive changes in my life recently: moving, living with strangers in a house-share for the first time, struggling to find work, finding work, battling to establish work-life balance, working even more. I am under no delusion that I am suffering an unfair schedule. In working a thirty-two-hour week, I have more free time than many, if not all of my readers. I hope it is still fair to suggest that the acclimatising process is still a lengthy one. After five months on contract, it feels like all I do is work, eat, wash the dishes and sleep. I have often resorted, in the last month or two, to writing Jeremy’s Journal during my lunch break at work. The beginning of this paragraph was. The voiceover for last week’s journal was recorded in the corner of the warehouse where we keep the excess cushions for sofas and armchairs.
I like to think that there is a reason for my keeping the journal alive, though I’m not sure what it is. I have often thought, in those moments of doubt, that I could do other things in the time I spend writing, illustrating and now narrating the journal each week. I could be writing my book. I’ve occasionally dreamt of sewing and embroidery projects (especially now that I’ve got a bin full of upholstery off-cuts to dig through). I considered buying a 3D printer and experimenting with what kind of products I could design. Whenever I have expressed doubt, the immediate feedback I’ve been given is to keep going. I’ve had about ten really good ideas for other long-term projects, like Jeremy’s Journal, that I could spend a little time on each week. One involved shouting the praises of film photography. Despite how exciting these ideas may sound, I can’t seem to make the trade. This publication is not growing (though, admittedly, I do little to help it on that front). Sometimes it is not even particularly good. But there is some thing, some heart or kernel that keeps me coming back. I get the sense, perhaps it is a hope, that I will reach a point at which I turn around and look at the journals I have left behind me and they will count for something. Whether they sharpened my communication skills or kept me writing fit, or brought structure to my life, or, I hope most of all, something of value to yours. Here’s to that moment.
The train to Cologne, the cushion room in the warehouse, the park bench at a holocaust memorial, the couch in my girlfriend’s lounge, on my phone in the gym and sitting at the bus stop in the rain are just a few places I’ve written the journal in the last month or two. If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.
Don’t stop writing!
Moet asseblief nie ophou skryf nie, ek geniet dit terdee en verskriklik baie. I will buy a copy of your first book. Cheers