Still in bed, I check my e-mails. I wonder if work is going to bother checking in before Friday. Probably not, I think. I file the thought aside. I have more important things to focus on. Queer Out Here is in full edit mode and I want to get as much of it done before I am called back to the office. But first e-mails. A friend has replied to one I sent the day before, checking in on her. My reply fires off too fast, mopey and self-indulgent, or so I feel. I regret it as fast as it disappears through the network of Internet cables. It is too late to call it back so I send another one, cheerier and more like I meant to do the first time around. I hope my friend doesn’t think too hard on my first one. It was meant to remain in my head but slipped off my fingers.
I normally take time with e-mails, read my messages multiple times over before sending them but not today. I am unsure why. There is nothing to be done now, so I try not to think about it and go about editing Queer Out Here. Headphones on, I walk to the study, hack and chop at audio files, tweak EQs, change volumes, move files about, and save repeatedly at every change being made. Eventually a first draft materialise.
I listen to it cleaning the fridge, pausing to take notes on what I want to change. I wash the dishes and clean lunch remains before returning upstairs. I check my e-mails. There is none from work and none from my friend. I resign myself at getting a message from work at the last possible minute tomorrow. I hesitate to call my friend but don’t. I have been there before, overthinking words that people have passed no judgement over. I refresh my e-mails but there is still nothing.
I check Twitter and delight in the flood of K-Pop videos over racists hashtags, reporting a couple of tweets that have slipped through. I consider editing more of Queer Out Here but it is past five o’clock now. The work day is over and I have yet to write and post some of my diary. Queer Out Here will have to wait.
Later in bed, I ask my partner if she’d like to start meditating. We have been discussing it on and off for the last few days. I can feel my brain spiralling out of control. My attention is spread thin, my hands instinctively grabbing my phone for no reason other than an excuse to stare at a screen hoping for change to happen. I would normally head for the hills in those moments, sleep out in a field or under the canopy of tress but it isn’t possible right now. Instead, we breathe. In and out, silently, thoughts invading and retreating, and eventually, my shoulders relaxed, my jaw unclenched, I fall asleep.