Today I drove to John O’Groats — the longest trip I’ve made on my own so far.

I worked in the Storehouse café there, looking out at the abandoned isle of Stroma past the Overlook Hotel (I don’t know what it’s actually called; I’ll always think of it as the hotel from The Shining).

I sat next to the fire”¦

“¦where I did some thinking and scheming.

Then I drove back to Wick and continued my work on a big Strategic Coach project, something I can’t finish in one go. I find those challenging — but it’s just The Ziegarnik Effect.

On the weekend, stopping over in Inverness on the way home, we went to Waterstones bookstore, and there were two books we picked up and deliberately bought the hardcover versions of, specifically because:

• We wanted to support a physical bookstore (even though we could probably have got the books cheaper online).
• There was something undeniably more pleasurable about the feel and the mechanics of a hardcovers in the hands.

My sketchbook is hard-backed, and there is something elevating about having my work in-between those boards.

Incidentally, the books are Ruby Wax’s Sane New World and Alain de Botton’s The News.

~

Last night found us sanding down the new yard-arm for the Isabella Fortuna (the 40-ton sailing ship I accidentally hit a shark with).

We learned a lot about sailing terms (a surprising number of which have come into common parlance), and… We sanded. For a long time. But it’s for this:

My mum just sent a message saying that my dad just re-broke his other hip. I don’t even know how to process this.

Last night, Craig got his first proper look at the Northern Lights. I’m always amazed that our atmosphere keeps working, that it doesn’t just get blown away when bombarded with solar particles, or (for that matter) that all the cells and bacteria in my body remain in the specific delicate balance that allows me to be alive.

Of course, at some point on a personal this will stop working and I’ll die, and on a galactic level everything will all be incinerated or sucked into nothingness. But for now, it’s pretty neat.

At Christmas, I indulged myself in some off-time away from thinking about family-stuff by playing a Star Wars game that had been ported to the iPad. It was really well-made in every way, from having an actual story, feeling consistent with my childhood sense of that universe, down to a graceful way of handling the actual play.

Yeah, “play” is the word. Weird how we adults denigrate play.

I finally finished the game last night:

This morning, Mom dropped me off at UPEI, whose beautifully ugly Brutalist concrete library has been my haven of late — just as it was in my teens, when I went there to read all the pop-psychology books in an effort to learn how to use my mind.

So, not much has changed. Except now I’m creating instructive articles andillustrations for my client’s audience and trying to figure out my life by writing and drawing in my sketchbook.

It’s easy to think of artists as insecure little attention-seekers, but my experience today in the library reminded me of what art is for: processing experience.

Or maybe it’s not even that, it’s just stating our experience. Having a thought, opinion, or emotion at all does reassure us that there is a perceiver (us), but I wasn’t motivated by any Cartesian inquiry today. Simply drawing what was in my heart was a balm.

I’m weary, beat, tired of trying to guess and hope at what’s going to happen with my dad, trying to reach out to someone who is closed to me, despite our love for each other. Drawing that today — admitting it in words and pictures — was comforting, even if it solves or advances nothing.

I’m reminded of the Monet exhibition in Edinburgh, where amid the sedate fields and ponds I found one shocking picture of the artist’s wife on her deathbed:

How courageous, I thought, to turn to one’s art in the worst possible time. Now I think it wasn’t courage, but simple necessity. When there’s no comfort to be had, nothing to do, at least expression is available. Before we can hope to understand, we first have to look at what it is we’re trying to understand.

Not to paint too a dire a picture of my family. We’ve been very lucky in our lives, and the situation with Dad could rebound some more.

I stayed here following the dictates of my heart; but now I’m at a loss. I want to do anything I can for my dad, but whatever needs doing has to come from him — whether it ultimately will or not.

P.S. My mum and I just watched a BBC Scotland program called “Two Doors Down” that aired at New Year, and we had a right giggle at it. Ahh, that’s what we needed: some laughter.