Wednesday, 03 April 2002 | Assignments

I realized today that I shouldn't be relaxed at all, but that I should be panicked and stressed, because I'm suddenly enormously busy. No time for personal projects like sleeving negatives or burning CDs. The trash is going to have to quietly stink under its lid, and those clothes on the floor will remain a colorful heap at least for a couple more days.

Most of it is about photos. Two assignments for the Spectator, four days of shooting patrons and filmmakers at a documentary film festival, and one ten-picture compilation for Colectivo, in addition to regular working hours and feeling sick and starting that new website and finishing my parents' anniversary present. And all of it I want to do, with the exception of getting sick, of course.

Tonight I went to a dance club in Chapel Hill to take pictures of tightly-clad long-haired smiling drones who danced in circles and posed when I pointed my camera at them. And pictures of the DJ, his fingers lightly gripping the record, pushing it back and forth on the turntable, next to knobs and switches and crates filled with vinyl, while the disco ball lights scraped over everything.

It's an hour-and-a-half after I told myself I would be in bed.