Wednesday, April 29

Without meaning to I began this morning with a second installment of yesterday’s internal monologue.

Something reminded me of how happy and grateful I am to be alive, and I realised that this is one of the things I have learned from Auo’s life. A week or so before she died, she was complaining about how her friends always got what they wanted and she didn’t and then, in answer to a question about whether she would rather be one of her friends, she gave a broad grin and said, “no, its really cool being me”.

I decided that thinking that it is cool to be me in my present situation – whatever that is – is the best thing I can do. We are alive for such a short time and there is so much to see and do, and so much to learn and (most importantly) to pass forward, that we would be irresponsible not to enjoy and use our time. This, I realised, is one of the things that Auo has passed forward to me and, once understood, it carries a responsibility with it. We are stories all the way down, and what we do, and how we face the world, is what we tell people about ourselves – and about them and the world we share. We are what we pass forward and nothing more.

I kept these thoughts to myself until I reached Arcada. At 9:00 I had my annual performance meeting with Nathalie to discuss my progress, my ambitions and my frustrations. By 10:00 she knew all about them, and we had agreed that, once I have a doctorate, she will support an application to TUF for a two-year research project looking at social pooling and pocket worlds.

At 10:15 I opened the all-day CMS workshop and the WordPress fun began. Along the way I discovered the Gridiculous WordPress theme, based on the grid system of the same name, and played with it for an hour. It occurred to me that it might be a useful tool for when I rebuild the theme that powers this site over the summer.

Now it is lunch time and I have gone outside for a break. The weather ensures that it is not very far outside. The sky is a uniform grey and it is raining almost as hard as in Paris. It is as cold as it was at 7:50 this morning.

Once I have cleared my head and filled it with oxygen, which the online media suite noticeably lacks, I will go back upstairs and use my lunch break to write a series of emails about Arcada, my doctorate, Pixelache, and heavy metal lectures for staff and students.

Then I will take a deep breath and head back into the airless learning environment.

During the afternoon Nathalie from Pixelache will send a link to a short write up of the festival at Mal au Pixel which describes almost all the programme except for my contribution.

I will console myself with the thought that they are probably planning another post just about me. I will not be able to fool myself quite that easily, though; and so I will formulate a Plan B. In future, at these kind of events I will perform as The Invisible Artist, and then my complete lack of recognition will form an integral part of the performance.