not really here
Life is kind of busy and it's bothering me more than a little. I could easily use a week to run catch-up on essential things like paying bills, cleaning, life admin. Arrgh! Work is about the only thing that I am achieving right now. And that was satisfying for about a week or so, but I hit a wall with it today. A big wall. I couldn't even rally any excitement when one of my projects won an award for excellence.
Me: *monotone* yay. whoohoo.
However, there is a sort-of silver lining. It's called MIFF (Melbourne International Film Festival) and it started yesterday. It's other name is That Torturous Annual Event That Usually Winds Up With K in Bed with Exhaustion and/or the Flu.
1. A month before the event, 50 page program released. Spend the month pouring over program, circling, crossing out, question-mark-ing and generally trying to narrow down the field. I'm running with a new policy this year of ruling out entire sections of the program (the Asian Metropolis, Backbeat) and entire countries (Denmark, Japan, Australia). It narrows the field, but still doesn't make it manageable.
2. Purchase pass but procrastinate until the last minute about booking sessions. It's ten movies, plus three during the day if you can skive off work, except I can't. So you don't want to waste your ten!
3. Start hearing rumours about sold out sessions and impulse-book online. Regret it in the morning when you drag yourself out of a Thai musical...
4. Inevitably end up with a schedule clash that has you sprinting across city blocks between movies.
5. Keep missing your friends but bumping into people you don't really want to meet in the interminable queues for tickets, seats, cappucinos and snackage.
6. Catch a cold. It's inevitable. That many people in drafty old theatres in the depths of the Melbourne winter? Fait accompli.
7. By halfway through the festival you're most likely grumpy as well as sick because you've misjudged badly on at least one session. The clock is ticking! The 'good' movies are already sold out. The bad ones start looking more appealing...
8. And it always ends in tears (sometimes literally), though hopefully the scars were worth it. Last year, for example, was the Year of the Bleak. I managed to pick a series of absolutely soul-crushing, annihilistic doom-ridden movies (Turtles Can Fly, Paradise Now, Darwin's Nightmare, etc). This year I'm hoping for at least one 'amusing', 'cute' or 'fun' movie. I may have raised my hopes to high.
So if I've been hideously slack about answering comments or commenting on posts, please forgive! I still hold hope of being back to 'normal' in a few weeks time. Or perhaps I'll just reach the 'don't care' stage at work a lot sooner than I should.