I want to write a cookbook. A beautiful cookbook, with nice paper and a nice cover on it, and with lots of black & white pictures and colour pictures with lots of nice muted texture like the ones from VSCO like this amazing one here. I want to make this cookbook because I want to go through the process of buying the food so that I can make the meals so that I can have the people around to eat them with and finally open one of those special-event-wines that I keep sitting in the cupboard. I also just want to just have the photos. I want to look at them and feel them printed on that nice paper. I want the cookbook to be like Tartine’s or Donna Hay’s. I want it to make people want to rush home from work and cook supper and drink wine and not eat until 9pm on a work night. I want it to make me do that.
Besides food, I want to take more pictures in general. I want to take more pictures of just being outside. Early in the morning and late in the night and in the late evening when the sun is just about to go down and everything looks perfect and new and fresh. I want to take pictures of and on the beach, which is great because that’s something else I want to do. I want to go to the beach more, and throw rocks and sit down and watch the waves and see the tide coming in. When I’m not doing that, I want to be eating an ice cream, or stopping at a roadside stand to buy vegetables, or waiting for the barbeque to warm up to put a thick steak on. I might even take a picture of the steak too.
When I’m not eating ice cream, cooking steaks or buying vegetables, I want to run the Tely10. I just want to do it once. I just want to do it and feel happy about my time and feel good as I cross the finish line and feel like I’ve done something. I want all of those 6:30am runs to mean something—to accumulate to something. I want all those mornings I ran in the rain and the snow and the wind and the cold and the pain and the frustration and the joy and the sun and the warm summer breeze to all just add up already. I just want to do that once. I also want to do another century ride — 100km — on my bike like I did about 10 years ago with a best friend. I want to sit on my bike and feel strong for hours and push up the hills and through the wind and ride with a group and take a turn at the front. It’ll be harder and harder to do all that with some of my other competing wants—like the huge one to finally get my house in shape. To finally finish some of the dozens of half-finished projects I’ve got going on like the basement or the attic or the entire outside or get the hardwood laid or get the bathroom finally painted and put in that fan.
Then there’s all this work stuff. Will I ever actually, truly learn to program? Will I ever be satisfied if I don’t? Do I even want to actually learn, or do I just want to continue to skim the surface of it all. The way I skim the surface of everything else. Am I actually, deep-down ‘just’ a designer? Am I actually ‘just’ a teacher? A something else? Is this where I should be putting all my energy? Should I be out there writing cookbooks and taking pictures and going to the beach and eating ice cream and feeling connected to something all day? Does anyone out there feel connected to anything? Anyone? Do you people have this level of noise go on in your heads all day? This unending doubt and self-doubt and distraction and constant stream of questions? Will I actually publish this? Will I leave it published or will I delete it?