A Love of Small and Intimate Places

I watched a documentary on Netflix called "Secret Mall Apartment".

After a mega mall and other developments encroached on their bohemian neighborhood, eight artists found some unused space inside the mall and brought couches, armoires, kitchen table and chairs and lamps. They even built a cinderblock wall and installed their own door. They used the place for leisure, playing video games and as a meeting place for their artistic projects.

It was quite the endeavor that took four or more years to complete. That was until they were caught and the gig was up.

They talked at one point about the feeling the secret apartment gave when you were in it. A windowless and serene space, even though the specter of being found out was a constant.

For some reason this resonated with me because I have often enjoyed tiny rooms with no windows. A secret little hideaway where your sense of time and responsibility vanishes. 

I remember my parents threw out a bar that had been in the basement out on the front lawn for the garbage haulers to take away. I crawled under it and spent hours just lying there in the dark on a bright sunny day. I was there so long my mothers was about to call the police. It was just about dinner time. I heard her calling my name, so I pushed the structure up and crawled out from under it. 

I'm sure my mother was at once bewildered and relieved.

Maybe that’s why I watch van-life YouTubers living in a relatively small footprint and think to myself I could do that. My wife always gives me concerned looks when I talk about one of their videos. I think she worries that living in a van is some kind of personal life goal.

I guess I like the idea of forced simplification, the small space and the ability to wake up anywhere your van can take you. This glosses over all the downsides of course. Like raising a family, having friends over just off the top of my head. Room to work on larger projects.

 And of course, the toilet issues.

We had an early dinner at Red Lobster to celebrate Robyn’s birthday. Red Lobster has become a birthday tradition in our family. The food and service were great as always. Afterwards we headed over to the mall, mostly to walk around after the big meal.

I wanted to stop at the Laura Secord store to get Robyn some French Mint bars and the Frosted Mint bars, because I know she loves them.

The kids bought a few things because they have way more disposable income than either of us at the is point. On the way home I took the highway and once we got over 80 km an hour the car started shaking violently. It seemed to be coming from the back end. I slowed and since we were taking the next exit I kept driving. At regular street speeds the car felt fine. I suspected it was build-up of ice and snow on one of the back tires that was causing the wobble.

I checked the tires once we pulled into the driveway and sure enough there was some tightly packed snow on the inner side of the rim. At least there isn’t a costly repair bill to deal with this week.

The weather here has been more like it was when I was a kid. The snow is staying on the ground and there is plenty of it. The last five years if it snowed it almost immediately melted. I think I only shovelled our driveway twice all last winter.

I started reading a new book toady called “Mythago Wood,” by Robert Holdstock. I am interested to get really stuck into this book as I don’t think it made much of a splash here in North America. At least I don’t see many north American authors talking about it. Not the ones I follow anyways. It won the World Fantasy Award for best novel in 1985.

The story revolves around a mythic wood inhabited by magical people. I’ve been reading mostly sci-fi and spy thrillers lately and I felt I should change things up a bit. It’s good to have some diversity in your reading, particularly if you want to write books of your own. I’ll have more on this book later.

I’ve not been getting up at 7:30 am the last few days as I have been staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning to get my word quota. I finished a few hundred words short of my goal of 2695 words, but again it was at a point in the story that seemed like a good place to park it for the night.

Luckily, February is just around the corner and that means a reset to the monthly word target. If I look at my google sheet where I track the word count, it tells me the last two weeks I have been averaging about 2500 words per day. That’s 474 more words a day than needed to make the challenge. I’m guessing that means I shouldn’t fall behind like I did at the beginning of this challenge. And that means a little less stress. I would like to see that daily numbers continue to average up at a small but steady pace. If I can get an average up to 2740 per day, then that equals 1,000,000 words per year.

But the main purpose of this challenge, at least for me, is to turn me into the kind of writer that writes every single day. The secondary objective to become a writer who writes 4000-6000 words per day every year. I believe one will follow and the success of the other.

Only time will tell.