Missives from Isolation #3 – Productivity
Bank holiday weekends are always nice – but it ain’t half weird when you can’t actually go and do anything.
As ever, I had grand but vaguely formed plans to ‘get stuff done’ on the long weekend. I do, after all, have about 7 different projects that could do with editing, rewriting, finishing, and generally paying attention to. I set out on Friday with grand plans of doing more writing and starting to get some editing done (finally!) on a novel that’s needed editing for a long, long time.
But in this lovely state of partial quarantine… everything just blends into one big blur of similarity. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way. What actually ended up happening on Friday and Saturday was that I got out of bed far too late, wrote a cursory amount each morning, ate lunch late, and then played video games.* Then I felt bad for not getting anything done. Then I felt stupid because it is the weekend, and I’ve been at work all week and earned the break – and then I felt even more stupid because it’s a long weekend, and in my head that apparently means that I have to work even harder to compensate for… not being at work, I guess?
Maybe I’ll get something done tomorrow. Maybe. But even though I haven’t been anywhere further than the shops in almost a month, I still feel like I need the rest more than anything else.
Anyway, on a less depressing note, I did manage to catch up on the Curtis Brown exercises I mentioned last week. Week 2’s product was… well, eh, so here’s Week 3 for you. It was an editing exercise – 20 minutes or so of intense writing to a prompt, crammed with as much description as possible, then cutting it down to what was actually necessary to get things to flow. It was actually pretty helpful. I think I’ll remember this lesson in future.
Enjoy.
*Look, when you can’t go outside properly then Minecraft is the next best thing, alright?
He could hear sirens. He couldn’t see anything, not yet, but he knew that the lights would come. They always did. There were always sirens here.
He leaned back against the wall and looked down on the streets below. This late at night all was golden, streetlamps and shop-fronts turning the city the hue of fresh honey. The brighter headlights of passing cars were ephemeral white streaks through the gold. From where he sat, high atop the office building, the labyrinth of streets below shone so brightly that almost all detail was erased. All was an ever-shifting golden blur.
The wind was cold up this high, but he didn’t mind. His jacket was well lined and the flask tucked inside it held a liquid warmth all of its own. The cinder-block he’d wedged in the doorway was worn almost wedge-shaped from constant use as a doorstop. He was far from the first or only one to come up here. But for now he was alone with the wind and his thoughts. He liked it that way.
He did this every week or so. Sometimes he just needed to be properly alone. That was almost impossible in a city like this – but up here, on the roof, the stench of humanity was blown away by the cool wind. Whenever he was overwhelmed, he came up here, and just listened for the sirens.
He saw the lights at last, peered at them to get the pattern. Police, he decided. The sirens sounded just a little different for each service. He picked out two, three cars, careening down the main road before hanging a razor-sharp left around another high building and darting out of view. He wondered where they were going. He seldom saw where the sirens stopped. But it wasn’t such a bad thing, not knowing.
He took another drink and listened to the wind. He caught sight of a planes running lights as it took off from the distant airport, before another siren caught his attention. Ambulance. He couldn’t see any lights, but it was probably just too far away. The spirits traced a line of fire down his throat.
He should go home. He should have gone home hours ago, but working in IT often meant odd hours and nobody batted an eyelid if he left the building late. Besides, it was Friday tomorrow. Nobody would be paying any real attention – he could roll up late in safety if he had to.
He took another drink. Last one, he warned himself. Hangover or no hangover, he did still have to come in at some point.
But he wanted to savour that particular loneliness for just a little longer.
One more, then, he conceded to himself – but he left the flask where it was in his pocket.
He sat, and waited, listening to the wind for the faint strains of another set of sirens.
