One Sock - Writing as Therapy

Below is a journal entry, from Wednesday 13th May.  The intent was to write about the sinking feeling I was experiencing, mentioned at the beginning, but by the end of writing this, I just felt fine. A stream of consciousness, cataloguing the main events of the previous 48 hours, or so, it illustrates to me the benefits of journal writing. It ends quite abruptly, because it had served its purpose.

Nuuna Voyager notebook with worn, holographic edge. The pen is from BilTema.

"Two calendar months in lockdown. 

I feel like I'm sinking. For some time today, I had one sock on, remedied only by Vincent pointing it out to me, then realising that I was aware and didn't give a shit, he took off the one sock, so I was sockless.

The socks in question were my black, wool socks that I wear to work, inside my warm, waterproof walking shoes. I haven't been to work today, so why was I wearing them/it?

Well, I went to work yesterday, with full moustache and no bra, wearing waterproof trousers (it was snowing, but that's really beside the point - I would have worn them whatever the weather) under which I had on the clothes I'd slept in - note the absence of the word pyjamas. No, clothes - vest, t-shirt and legging. No bra. I'd thrown on my trusty waterproof trousers, a hoody and my jacket to fulfil an order.

The order was delivered by Helge in the form of a small piece of paper, 8cm x 4cm. On one side was written Næringspris 2019 Fitjar Kommune, on the other side Kulturpris 2019 Fitjar Kommune. 

Leif had ordered some of these before, this time last year, no doubt. Same again, please. I thought there'd be a file and that I could ask Stian to do the job. I couldn't find the file (in the cloud) so I made a new one and told Stian where to find it. 

The order was placed on 6th. I remember, because he said it needed to be done by 15^th (femtende in Norwegain), I thought he said 5^th (femte), which confused me, because that was the day before. I knew it was the day before, because I had been convinced all that day that it was 5th and the only reason I was in any way aware of the date was because Cal's birthday is 5th May. So, on 6th May, I was fully aware, by the time I spoke to Helge, that I'd missed my friend's birthday, because I was a day out of sync.

So, from 6th-15th is more than enough time to do a job that takes, at most, one hour. And besides, I already had the file, I thought, so it wouldn't take any time at all.

I had thought about going into the office and doing the job myself, but I didn't want to mix with the men, who have been working the entire time and not really bothered about the whole thing. So when I got a text from Leif the day before yesterday (11^th), I decided to get the job done the next day.

I told him they'll be ready tomorrow and he said good because the prizes needed to be delivered today after tomorrow (13^th!).

That's when I decided in earnest to prepare the file and let Stain do the job.

It wasn't until after preparing the file and a few messages to Stain I realised he might not complete the job on time. So at around 2 in the afternoon yesterday, I left the flat and headed to the office. I got the job done. There was neither the old file, which I thought might have been on the old PC, nor the new file which obviously wasn't syncing with the cloud.

Long story slightly less long, I called Leif and told him the order was ready. He said he’d ask Helge to pick it up from my place so I went home, took off my gloves and bandana and trousers and jacket and then I'm not sure what I did for the rest of the evening, but I obviously went to bed in the same clothes and socks that I'd had on all day.

This this morning I woke up feeling shit, nothing new. I made coffee, and I'm not sure if I brushed my teeth, and started work on the sock pattern I've been working on for a few days. Challenging! The model I'm knitting is just for the photos and it's taking me days to knit it.

I finished it today and washed it and tried to take some nice pictures of it by arranging it on a white fleece blanket with the blinds open for nice light, but it just didn't look any good.

So, I took off one sock and put the wet model sock on my foot. This was very unpleasant. I took a few pictures before ripping off the sock and going for a bit of a lie down. Sometime later Vincent, removed my other sock and here we are."