If there was ever a day to write in a journal - this is it. Two weeks, up to three, of editing the Q1 edition of the magazine, coming to an intensity last week - editing, cover lines, contents, page one editorial, finishing a late article, rewriting another; like digging myself into a dark tunnel, or tunnel vision, of too much work. Living it, without meaning to: waking consistently at 4.30am with ideas and phrases to scribble down; blanking out in front of the television - it's tinsel, isn't it, not gold? - for half an hour before bed. Long days. Enjoyable most times, and it's the day job, but it curdles a bit with such other obligations as the annual self-assessment tax return. Schedules slip, and okay, that always happens, but when you can only watch rather than intervene because you're stuck with something else ...
    I remember days when television was spoken of as an art form: the word itself was accorded roughly the same status as, say, <painting>, or <cinema>, or at least <photography>. Now the status, or the recognition, or the <whatever it is> is accorded to the work itself - the HBO mini-series or whatever it might be, that you can buy later as a boxed set. And TV is the delivery mechanism; the first one, at least. A kind of democratisation?  There was a drama in the US, wasn't there recently, while I was clearing pages, about some new bill to do something about copyright theft, or censorship, or state control of the internet? Must look it up - Could look it up. Possibly part of the story.
    This is a time of transition on so many levels, and one lesson, or feature not to miss, is that we don't know where it's going. The hardest element to appreciate, empathise with, can't wait until I find the right word, when looking at any past time of transition, the renaissance or industrialisation or the Christian Year Zero, whatever, is that the participants didn't know what was going to happen next. This is our piece of history - content splurged onto the internet rather than mediated, pick your own example - and the part invisible to the future is: we don't know where it's going to go. Have I got this right - we sent men to the moon, and having done so, came away without long-distance space travel but with non-stick saucepans?
    In that example, the absent visionary was the one who could have said - "Where do we go from here?" With enough conviction, authority to get an answer commensurate to the achievement already. Maybe the moral of that one is - we can't wait for that person, nor just blunder on without the question being asked. Or in this year of grace, we'll end up with the spiritual saucepans. We get to the pivotal step today, this year, here, now, reading this - and we are our own absent visionaries. Ask. Answer.

Sunday morning, and I do remember saying to myself that if the pace of work made this an occasional blog, I would at least keep it to once a week. Not "try to keep it to", because "try" so often seems to encapsulate an asumption of failure. So that answers today's first question: do I keep up with the flow of work, or deliberately interrupt it? The latter, for once. I've been busy, and for the next short while, I'm not busy. Maybe Malpas at lunchtime, after the train, and the weekend papers. And maybe one day I should think about broadening my horizons.
    Although maybe they're broad enough for this current life, and maybe that isn't my decision anyway. I shall listen to the teachers, finally, and stop/start fighting it - can't decide which is more appropriate. Debate for today: the virtues of "grounded" in context. Alternative debate for today, the scientific/religious debate again; two man-made standpoints that (a) assume that they're in opposition to each other, and (b) seem to assume - or one of them (perhaps necessarily) does - that they can adequately be addressed from inside the experience.
    I shall [not] write a short story one day in which it is discovered, beyond doubt, that all this was set in train by a white-bearded old patriarch sitting on a throne on a cloud, attended by angels, with a set of pearly gates at the entrance to his, er, property. All the trimmings. And I shall ensure - this being the point of the story - that the discovery is made in accordance with scientific principles, observation, etc., so that the existence of the old fellow is, let's say, "legitimised" by virtue of its status as a scientific discovery.
    Because it occurs to me, sometimes, that science moves forward by invalidating the previous hypothesis. And it also occurs to me that all scientific enquiry is tentative except in the debunking of a belief system that has been adopted without recourse to scientific method. As if "method" is all. Liked the letter in the Sunday papers today, pointing out that belief in an afterlife doesn't necessarily require a belief in a deity. If an atheist can believe in this life, why not the next?
    I really should cut down on the caffeine.

 ... and how have I been getting on?
    First week, work. Second week, reaction. Then, this last weekend, a removal of furniture: drive van to Bath, Saturday; drive van back from Bath, Sunday. Enough of a break for a re-set. First weekend - everybody leaving, and left feeling unbalanced, as if unaccustomed to the additional space. Second weekend - more like completion.
    I wonder how much of that makes sense. Big purge of rubbish to the end of the road first thing this morning, in the dark, then the <school run> up to meet the bus in a purple-grey morning twilight, red on the horizon and hidden in the clouds. Haven't felt like seeing anybody, and still don't; the evidence suggests that this is a dark time, although every end contains a beginning.

What do I choose for this "Year of Doing"?
    These past few days have been a time of getting everything straight. Started the New Year with a burst of work, then everybody left on Friday morning, and that triggered an urge to spend more time with the laundry, the still-up Christmas decorations and in due course (inevitably) the furniture moving. Every space (okay, the ones that matter) to be made new. Nearly there, so let's assume that the next task - clearing and vacuuming a space, moving a chest of drawers into it - can be taken as symbolic of this whole moment.
    I choose to sustain the pace of work. So instead of "getting round to it", I'm actually going to do it. [Pause.] Space cleared. [Pause.] That's the vacuuming. Not sure whether it's the <multitasking> or the <actually getting something done> that feels good, but I wonder if I could live this whole life - my whole life, mine; it's to be lived - between the punctuation marks of a blog post. [Pause.] One chest of drawers, moved. Later this morning - a contemplative, take-time activity - go through the contents of the drawers before putting them back. I've been stepping past that chest of drawers for weeks; in that particular way, the space around me (my space, etc.) is no longer mildly, below-the-radar inconvenient.
    This I have done before. This I will do again. Renewal. As that which is to be renewed, reveals itself. Question for the day: where is <choice> in suddenly recognising the <rightness> of something, somewhere, some action? A higher place? Is this the higher place? Grey morning with birdsong. Filament branches, so delicate, not quite black, just under the surface of the foggy sky.

Love. First written word of the year. Went with the impulse, and came up with "Love. Life. Desire." as my first three words. Wrote a bit further, and came up with "The Year of Doing" as my designation for 2012. Been back in the notebooks, writing in longhand, back in the chair in the window, watching the dawn. Come back to this now, change it.
    The Year of Doing. Hm.If all change is ultimately chosen and personal, perhaps not such a bad resolution.