Is there such a thing as time dysmorphia? I’m having another of those instances where I feel as if I’m living in three different time periods at once, because of the various things cycling through my life as I write. Like Billy Pilgrim, I feel as if I’ve become unstuck in time… but, thankfully, with less trauma as a result. (Well, so I hope, at least; check in with me in a couple of months to see.)
Almost all of this is work-related to some degree. The part that isn’t is The Now, because… well, that’s where we actually all are. The Now is the everyday and everything that entails, from the to-do lists at the job to the simple tasks of eating, sleeping, and making sure everyone else in the house — human and otherwise — does the same thing. That’s the easy part; it’s the things that are happening right in front of your face that you can’t get by, and just need to take care of.
Then, there’s what’s happening three weeks from now as I write: a trip to New York for New York Comic Con, and everything that’s happening there. It’s the biggest show of the year, and the busiest, too (especially after how strange San Diego Comic-Con turned out to be this year; this one, at least, has celebrities and studios that have had the time to work their way around the strikes), and I already know some — but not all — of what I’ll be up to for it. Meetings and emails and plans are happening, and it’s easy to slip forward into that as if it’s already there.
And then, there’s what’s happening a week after I get back from New York: a three week trip back to the UK, which is also currently in the planning stages. I’m booking flights to multiple places at once, hotels and places to stay at multiple places, trying to work out when and where I’m going to be, and why: who to see, who to talk to… It’s overwhelming and dizzying to try to keep track of. (The potential interviewees are also dizzying in their own right.) Time is a flat circle, as the show and resulting joke had it, but it’s a concept I’m beginning to see the appeal of.
The strangest thing about this is, I actually have something approaching downtime before all this happens, but it doesn’t feel like it: there’s so much planning and conversation about what’s coming that the actual downtime, the weekends off, the theoretical relaxation, doesn’t feel real. All the time I should be savoring because things are about to be crazy, I spend thinking about the planning that hasn’t been done yet.
By the time I get to mid-November, I might have lost my mind. But at least I’ll be back in one piece again.