I've been on holidays of sorts for most of this week. Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays, so a 4-day weekend. Back to work Tuesday for the all-important get-timesheets-and-invoice-approved-and-submitted-so-I-can-have-money exercise. Then Wednesday and Thursday off, and Friday is another public holiday: ANZAC day.
I rarely take proper holidays; rather just a few days here and there, and a whole week once a year or so. Actually, that's all people get in the US isn't it: 2 weeks' leave a year? But don't get the idea I'm one of those sad, wedded-to-my-job types. Oh no! I work relatively few hours and spend as much time as I can with immediate family and close friends. This is obviously why I never have enough money but, perhaps one day, I'll be able to look back and know I got the balance roughly right.
This break though, has been long enough to seem like a proper holiday. I've been off for 8 days now and have 2 to go. The day at work hardly counted as there were very few people in and I only worked a short day. The holiday feeling is strengthened by the most-amazing autumn weather, the kind of thing that would pass for a hazy, balmy summer in much of the world. The temperature has been 20 - 22C (70F) day after day. Mornings are foggy and cool, but not frosty. We've yet to bother with the central heating.
Anyway, the point of all that is to explain to my audience of 2 why I've been quiet.
It's this: when I'm on holiday, away from the office, I totally de-intellectualise (© Andrew 2003). My thoughts become less and less explicit. Er, bad choice of words, cos in some ways they get more explicit. Try again. Perhaps I meant less conscious? I feel more than I think. I do spend the day lost in thought, become very reflective, but less and less do I put my thoughts in words. And what am I thinking of, besides the aforementioned less-and-more-explicit stuff? Life stuff. Elemental stuff. Gardening, landscaping, building, cooking, walking, soaking in the sun. Trees and rocks and grass and water and sky and sun and bread and wine and paintings and myriad other things that are all about a sensual life, about the business of actually living, and not about things like relational-database design.
And I find myself spending hours reading digital camera reviews. As ever, I want to express my emotions and visual means seem more apt than words for my current state of mind. Unhappily, though, I cannot make a decent photograph despite some years of enthusiastic efforts, and now leave that side of things to my rather-more-talented wife. I hafta remind myself -- frequently -- that the mere acquisition of a digital camera will not suddenly release the genius photographer within me; I took crap, boring images with a succession of 35mm compact and SLR cameras and so I would with any other kind of camera.
Naturally I shall still go ahead and buy a digital camera, play with a bit, become upset with my efforts and then give it to my wife.
11:27:53 PM 
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