I left a bag on a train and now it's swallowed by the abyss of lost property. Reminds me of how entirely replaceable, interchangeable, ephemeral everything I own is. A few taps of the credit card and everything is magically restored. It's dizzying. Even things I care about, like my art books, could be set on fire one day and delivered again to my door the next. Money is magic, things are unreal, convenience is king.

Today was the closest I've come to not bothering to continue with this project. Divided attention. Thinking about business. The goal for a lazy person like me is to find the route of minimal possible effort to maximum possible gains. Can't focus on anything sufficiently to succeed.

Cotswolds for a 100th birthday. Elderly blood-relation with bad eyesight receives this dire drawing as a present. Finishing touches added on a high-speed train to Coventry. Must try harder!

Bike, car, train, bus, sofa. Not much time to work on the drawing. Wanted to read in transit but couldn't focus. Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, too enjoyable to squander only half my attention on it.

Rifled through some of my drawings over the past three months. They're much worse than I remembered them to be. Funny how I distort reality to match my image of myself. Just have to look at the originals to see how amateur I am. I have remembered the originals rather than my copies.

How quickly the tranquil life of reading and contemplation is interrupted and obliterated from memory. It's an inherently unstable state, an interstitial period between things one must do and things one must think about.

Enjoyed working from life yesterday, so did another self portrait tonight in the absence of another model.

My sister kindly posed again. Fun to use chalk, though it's hard to switch from the metalpoint mindset after so long.

Booked Barcelona and Madrid.

This drawing is what happens when I have no eraser. Abysmal, ugly, amateur and no way to disguise it. The original is a beautiful Raphael girl.

Started the day with another Shock of the New episode, this one about surrealism. Watched videos of building demolition. Set the tone for the day. Feel untethered again. Past feels like a dream, future is unreal, the present a needle balancing on its point.