Friday should have been a better day. I was unparalyzed from my being productive Thursday, right? Right. It didn’t quite work out that way.
I woke up at 4:00 to hit the beach. Even by Ala Moana sunrise standards, it was a beautiful morning. The full moon shone over the blackish-blue on the Kewalo end as the sun came up over the Waikiki condos. I was initially torn between wanting to get a series of sunrise photos and wanting to see it from in the water as I swam through the lightening water.
I chose the water, of course. I swam pretty hard for the first half of what’s been my usual distance lately, then cruised most of the way back. By the time I was done, there was a remarkable number of stand-up paddleboarders in the water and more swimmers than usual on a Friday morning. I was happy to be ahead of them.
I hit the BK drive-through for breakfast and ordered a ridiculous amount of food, enough to cover me for breakfast and lunch even with my metabolism pumping.
Got off to an okay start at work, but then major distractibility kicked in. I couldn’t focus on anything. We had a 3:00 all-staff Zoom meeting, and I did okay during the meeting, but its placement in my workday added to my difficulty with sustained focus. I finally got something turned in, a revision of one of the things I submitted Thursday, but I’m making myself do a few more things over the weekend. Penance.
I had some lazy burritos for dinner while I watched Pitch Perfect again, then crashed unintentionally while it played through a second time. I spent the next few hours in and out of consciousness, never really getting up to shut things down until around 4:00, when I just gave up, and got ready for the beach.
There was a lot of texting and office Skyping all day. I shouldn’t say what most of it was, but someone in the office created a fun little activity to make the interesting Zoom meeting even more interesting. It was remarkably fun and kind of bonding for a few of us who participated.
Crush Girl and I texted intermittently all day and into the evening, too. So it was a busy day of communicating with coworkers who’ve become friends, and with just friends.
None of the new metal releases this week look very interesting, so I spent a lot of Friday getting caught up with some new stuff from the past few weeks. The new Deftones was an interesting first listen, but I got tired of it pretty quickly. I like the idea of Deftones but the reality just doesn’t work for me. The new Ayreon has moments but it’s a little on the boring side, and there’s a narrator. Ugh. No thanks.
The new album by the Ocean, Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic is more like it. Amazing album, if not quite as good as they’ve been. I was pleasantly surprised by this black metal band I’d never heard of until this week, Havukruunu. Their new album, Uinuos syömein sota, made for nice background music while I worked. I’ve never been much into black metal, but since this lockdown began, I’ve really come to appreciate a good deal of it. Something about the dark emptiness, the echoing kind of agony-filled despair works for doing some difficult writing or mundane chores. I wasn’t expecting the solos to be so good, too.
Anyway. Here’s to the weekend. I’ve got a lot of writing to do. I hope I can get to it all, but if I can just put a little dent in it, I think I’ll be okay.
Leave a comment if you lack adequate connectivity in these hollow, abyssmal days of pandemic. We can share some echoing, agony-filled despair or something. I’ve got a good soundtrack for that!