Wednesday, 11 January 2006 | December

When I got home last night (late. lately it's been very late.), I discovered that the UPS driver had simply set my camera in the middle of the hallway of my building, even though the box had "Nikon" seductively printed on top, and even though I'd redirected the package to another address entirely. It was fine, though, and I don't care. I'm so glad to have my camera back, after having let the Nikon repair department borrow it for a few weeks. It sounds kind of dumb, I know that, but having it back feels similar to the first energetic day after a bout of sickness.

My camera's absence was part of the reason I documented so little of December, and now it seems almost like a lost month to me. Part of it was also because I was so busy that instead of working in a linear fashion, my mind jumped around like an edgy stray cat, running for cover beneath every parked car on the block.

Not that it was bad, really, just overwhelming, and I'm only just starting to find my way back to my regular schedule. In the last few weeks I'd more or less stopped all of the things that make me feel somewhat grounded: writing, taking pictures, exercising, being social, cooking, sleeping, etc. Come to think of it, I'm actually not quite sure how I was able to fill December's 744 hours while doing none of the things that normally take my time.

December was the end of my video production course (and the final project that went with it), former landlord troubles (providing me with a story which has already become a sort of trump card of landlord horror stories), preparations for my photo show, houseguests x2, and of course Christmas and Hanukkah (I made a lot of my presents this year, which may have not been the wisest choice). December was also the transit strike, which meant two days working from home (pretty good), one day of a two-hour round-trip bike commute in 30-degree weather (sweaty, sick-inducing), and six hours spent in a (crawling) car with my coworkers in exchange for five hours spent in the office (silly and painful, despite my coworkers' [appreciated] efforts to make it otherwise).

And, of course, there was moving. It was the longest move of my life, somehow, between the four flights of stairs on this end, my aforementioned former landlord issues, figuring out how to combine my belongings with someone else's (somehow we now have three copies of The Bell Jar and four air conditioners), getting rid of excess things (George Foreman grill!), painting furniture, cleaning, and learning trial-and-error carpentry. Now that I'm mostly settled, though, things are falling back into place, and the move feels like one of the better decisions I've made, up there with moving to New York in the first place. I'm in love with a lot right now, and that feels pretty lucky.