Reservations

When people stop to ask me why I look so tired, I generally respond saying "September and October were pretty long months". Trying to recount why feels a little like trying to recount the events leading up to a hang over. I'm sure they were good, fun even, but I feel horrible.

It began in the most unlikely of places, a club night I hadn't planned on attending where I'd meet a girl I'd spend most of those next months with, she was pretty and reserved and had a strange spontaneity to her that reminded me of a Travis song. There was always a familiar smell I really liked about her that I couldn't place while we were dating, but deduced weeks later was the smell of hair spray.

The next week was a blur of trying to finish up a piece for an art show and building up my guts to ask her out, 5am mornings and 3am nights were pretty regular as I worked myself into a trance of baking sculpey, and hours on youtube learning to carve miniatures. I'd go to Vietnam that weekend with my sister on what I describe as a 'business networking convention'. It was a strange weekend and we mainly partied with the other young folks and then tried to amble along slightly hung over through the day's jam packed programs.

I'd take comfort in texting sweet nothings and making very elaborate notes in a molskine diary that was given to me for Christmas, somehow it made the days pass with a little more purpose.

The week after was beautiful and I ate lots of rich foods as my new companion was a foodie, I fell asleep during many shows as she was also insomniac, and I started also started reading again because she was also an avid reader of fiction written from the point of view of children which was something that I never realized I was also a fan of.

Work was great, we'd cracked a way to do halloween for one of my key ad accounts and it was a lot of hard work trying to stitch it all up before Bhutan but it all got done and before I knew it I was with my mum, on a trip to a place I had no concept of. Dawns came early and the days whizzed by and for the first time in my life I truly enjoyed hiking and being a son.

There were 3 days between Bhutan and Bangkok, during which I convinced the her to come with me to a television commercial we were shooting there. What would have been a caper turns into a long drawn out ordeal, and instead of heading out to the promise of a wrap party, we're standing in the dusty midst of a set being demolished around us while supervising a water splash product sequence at 3am.

Bangkok is fun though - a little surreal with a slight tinge of pre-apocalyptic fear, but I'm starting to really get her sense of humor and odd fascinations.

I get back just in time for halloween, it's a manic saturday night and I'm ferrying 6 interns around in my car at we attempt to drop off candy and scare everybody in singapore. It's late by the time I'm reunited with her, and she's dressed in a giant plume of color. She says people mistake her costume for a feather duster, or a carwash spindle. She's actually a colorful witch, I laugh and call her carwash, before I head back home and drop her off.

October ends following Monday when she comes round unexpectedly. I'd been caught by surprise and still have my PS3 bluetooth ear piece in when she comes in. I tell the my friends playing Battlefield 3 to give me a moment as I receive her and open a small note she's got for me.

The fatigue I'd held off for two months falls upon me. And for a while, I'm spasming involuntary. And then I can't bring myself to wake up or get out of bed. And then it's like September and October never happened, and there's laundry to be done, gym class and sculpey to be baked and another campaign to stitch up intime for another holiday.

But there's also a book on my bedside table, the curious incident of the dog in the night time. It's a murder mystery about a dog written from the point of view of a slightly autistic kid.
I'm really enjoying it so far.

I also get this feeling that these two months will be how I look back on 2011.