I'm about to open a new chapter in my life, this means closing the current one. In my personal narrative I have several threads which I must finish knitting, lest one leaves loose threads which would tangle with time.
So, focusing in the present moment, let us mark the time of this writing as the time of closing well, which shall end when I board on a plane to my next destination.
What are these loose threads?
Exploration.work
Four years ago I decided to merge all my online identities into a single presence: Method of Action. My hypothesis was that by focusing my creative expression into a single venue I would be more productive. I don't think it turned out this way.
I wrote my work logs with reasonable diligence, though I felt self-conscious going deeply personal in a professional venue. I think I have experiences this enough to know that I am not prepared for it. My professional and my personal life are not merged, and that is fine. This means it is time to split my identity again: Mark MacKay's personal website is exploration.work, and his professional website is method.ac.
This post should be published to exploration.work, and then a different one for Method of Action, announcing the reasoning behind the split.
The house
When I came back to Puebla to the house where I grew up, in was in a sad state. It's still in a sad state, though it has improved. I need resources (time and money) to fix it up, and I have discovered I'm not keen on repairing things. My water heater broke down and I started practicing cold showers, which led me to rediscover that making your body adapt to a rough environment will make it healthier.
At the beginning of my stay in Puebla I had more time than money, so I put some of it cleaning up the land behind the house. It needs some additional work and it is likely that I will publish my experience doing it.
Closing the house well would mean to finish this backyard work, to publish it, and to water-proof the roof so that the house remains protected into the next rainy season.
My family
Today is December 24, and I found some hours to write before Christmas dinner at my Aunt's house. My aunt is an architect who spent most of her professional career as an urbanism teacher, and is a well cultured and wise person. I will go there with my sister and my mother. It will be our first time spending Christmas with them.
Tomorrow I will have dinner with my dad at his home with his family. Over the last few weeks I've been working at dad's home office and then having lunch with them, and it is been a pleasant experience.
The day after tomorrow I'm leaving on a one-night trip to Las Estacas, a natural river, and Tepoztlán--a spiritual town in Morelos, with my mother and my sister.
It is a good way of closing the two years I've been in Puebla, but coming back from this I should visit my extended family to say goodbye too. I will figure it out next week.
I have a friend in my neighborhood (Óscar) to whom I promised a trip to Chautla, I shall complete this too before leaving.
Let's extract what needs to be done and imagine them in work log entries:
- "Follow Mark MacKay's personal pursuits at exploration.work"
- "My quarantine backyard"
- "My Trip to Chautla with Óscar"
More could come out of these tasks, but I will leave it at that. I will make intentions of writing every day. The only thing worse than a rambling, incoherent work log is no work log at all. Work is performed every day.