I’m feeling extra tired. I’ve been flat out for so long I can’t even remember when it started. I had half a day off last Sunday when my sister visited, but even then we ended up talking about art making and ideas, film developing, scanning and processing

My time is split between family. That’s at its lowest right now. Bless Shaazia and Sara; they tolerate and support me through all of this. Then there’s my job, which is incredibly stressful at the moment because we’re supporting the end-of-year shows. That means printing, mounting, curating, and installing work. And then there are my own studies and art-making for the MA, which takes up most of my time.

I managed to get my managers and HR to agree to let me use my annual leave to support my Master’s, so currently I only work two days a week. But even then... this week, on those two days, I started at 7 AM and finished at 10 PM. So I’m not really sure where the break is.

For my artistic practice, I’m preparing for several upcoming exhibitions:

• London Festival of Architecture. I’ll have some work shown there.

• University of West London Symposium. I hope to present some work-in-progress and share my concept.

• The Degree Show at CSM

• Down Arts Centre in Ireland, as part of the Seven International. Karen managed to organise a second exhibition for us there. Thank you, Karen.

• London Museum of Water and Steam. I’m currently in discussions with the management about the possibility of a group exhibition with our Seven International collective over the summer or early autumn.

For my MA work, I’m grappling with three main things. First is making content for the final submission: the 5-minute video, the blog, and the documentation. The second is an etching project. I challenged myself to complete a series of 10 etchings. I’ve made 8 so far, which I used to make a dummy book. The third project is what I hope to show at the degree show. I want to produce a series of photo etchings based on my recent photographs of the Thames. For this I go out every sunday and Staurday and make photographs with my 5x4 camera on the River Thames.

The etching work takes up about two and a half days of my week. Half a day, Thursday afternoon is lecture time with Jonathan and the rest fon the class. I usually spend the weekends photographing along the Thames. The evenings and the time in between are filled with processing film, reading, staying informed, and preparing the blog.

I’m so tired that I struggle to fall asleep. My legs are constantly aching from standing all day in the print studio. Every time I go to uni, I walk between 10,000 and 12,000 steps. For me, that’s 5,000 to 6,000 more than my average. My joints are starting to feel it now. My hips and knees are constantly sore. My hands are burned from all the chemicals and acid I’ve been using in the etching process.

But internally, I feel content. I feel blessed to be able to do this. To be on campus at CSM and use the facilities. My wife and daughter are supporting me on this journey, and I’m fully invested in it. I’m hungry to squeeze every last ounce of opportunity, to learn something new.

I know it’s going to be hard when the Thursday sessions suddenly stop. Then what? I need to make a plan now, because if I don’t, all this energy and momentum would lead to a crash if it just stops without direction.

One idea I’ve had for a while is to join a studio. We still have Seven International, and I’ll keep myself open to new opportunities.