Decision taken!

I went around the block, and drew quite a few people into my musings, which I tend to do (personal failing) but I like to think out loud and canvass opinions. I have reached a decision: in the second half of 2022, I am renovating my apartment. Not a minor kitchen tidy up, but a full 500-pound gorilla of a renovation. All finishes on all surfaces, new kitchen, new bathroom, and joinery everywhere. It feels great to make the decision to put down roots, and invest for the long haul: therefore, I will continue to have two car spaces (not important for anyone but me - but it means I can either keep the midlife-crisis convertible or get rid of it and have a visitor space); AND I will continue to live with my million dollar view.

This view is not quite as expansive as the one shown above, but it is pretty good. It is great to have a personal capital works project in the pipeline, one that I will live with for many years to come.

This is a real insight. I value it.

I have so few practical constraints on my creativity that to come up against a firm NO is liberating and prompting of personal insights. I DO NOT want to make films. (I am not kidding myself, I know I couldn’t make films without directorial training, money, backers, insight into the art, a natural propensity for cinema, etc. - and a host of other things I don’t have, but I truly do not want to have any of these things.)

Fantastic!

I am working out what I want to do slowly (basically over the last 50 years) by determining what I do not want to do. I loved writing those scanned pages in the café in Albert Park, with my messy, expressive handwriting - that is what I want to do! To write! Longhand, touch typing, script, copperplate - all of the above.

And drawing too. Modest aspirations, easily satisfied.

I am interested in making things, but not particularly interested in making films.

The making of films and architecture has a lot in common across both disciplines. Massive enterprises comprised of many moving parts, many collaborators, money and politics; and yet they both get attributed to individual authors.

Both lack a directness in production, they lack a hand-made component in the making. Authorship is overrated as a reward. Much better to make by hand if one wants to lead a satisfying and fulfilling life. In this way the making is more immediate, and it is less contingent on the cooperation and competence of many others.

True, the impact of what is made has less scope for exposure, but perhaps it has more relevance to those who experience it. It is certainly a case of quality over quantity.