emotionalmarkup

I don’t make a show of complaining about the cold but when I do it’s met with derision. It’s hard being surrounded by a complete miscomprehension of what it’s like to come from a place where it doesn’t get below 15 degrees celsius.

I’m not one to keep a diary when travelling. I hardly take photos. What will I have to look back on, you ask? A few doodles, observations and memories that I can embellish at wish rather than live with the cold reality.

Hand drawn during stratospherically inane seminar, traced in Illustrator and touched up in Photoshop.

This one was done, once again, in a boring meeting but lovingly crafted with the use of a spiffy black biro I found on the floor beforehand.

Don’t waste biros!

After walking out of a particularly insipid meeting the other day I looked down at my notepad to see what I’d jotted down. You know the sorts of things: action list, contacts, deadlines and so on.

But all I’d taken away, like many meetings before, was a doodle. So I’ve decided to hang on to them.

My response to the zealous meeting overlords when they make their disapproval known, is that I learn best through disassociation and, if I’m feeling particularly chirpy, that perhaps they should set up another meeting to discuss why they’re so uptight.

This one is from a spanish class where we were going over the possessive pronouns. Yawn!

There’s a queer sensation I get when about to write something that someone else will be reading - even if the probability of my words touching the retinas of another human being is far less than that of George Lucas creating a summer blockbuster about Jar Jar Binks - I draw up a blank. I don’t know what to write. It’s like eating soup with chopsticks.

So, picking up on an exercise I once read, whereby, instead of staring at you monitor wondering why the BBC hasn’t updated its RSS feed in the last five seconds, you describe the torment of your writer’s block and hope to uncover a terrific idea or unleash a flow of something legible and interesting. The theory is that through simply initiating the process you are “warming up” your writing muscles in preparation for exercise. (Actually I prefer the Hemingway method whereby you lubricate your brain cells to a level sufficient for creative output).

Alas for me, it just makes me want to shovel out nonsense in the hope that I may avoid articulating an opinion, or forming an argument about something that arrested my interest ten minutes ago but which has now become as interesting as the Wall Street Journal is to a blind dog with no anus (just in case the dog in fact could read or wanted to shit on the paper, circumstances in which it could be argued that dogs might find the WSJ interesting), or fly shit is to just about everyone. That being said, I do admire those who can so deftly compose a rounded essay on a topic with engaging facts and just enough humour to raise an eyebrow or piss oneself hysterically, depending on the location of the reader. Hundreds of said articles are written every day. Can you find one? It’s a great waste of company time.

How do they do it I wonder? “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working” - some mildly famous painter once said. So I decided to draw a picture of SuperGeekess in black biro. Still waiting…