Three: Counting on your hands... and knees

What would you do with a few hours to yourself?

I get so frustrated. All day long all I can do is think what I might be doing if I weren't at work, weren't cooking, weren't cuddling on the couch. Now disclaimer: without any of those things my life would be as unfulfilling as it was in 2013, 2014, times when I had lots of time and freedom and squandered it anyway, but you don't know what you've got till its gone. (At the time I had good reason to suspect I was going to be a single man working in retail forever.) I reflect fondly on times when I was able to focus at least - go to the mall on Sunday and spend all day hunched over my Netbook/Tablet writing what I hoped would be a masterpiece, the one thing I wanted to write, the thing I knew I could focus on. Progress occurred. I had a project.

Now my project is to read works from other people and talk about them to nobody for no reason. I do it for kicks, fitting it in when I can - ideally once per week but les lately. Today, Mel is out wedding dress shopping and I have the afternoon to myself. What do I do? I write my X-Cerpts often on weekends while Mel naps, or late in the evening while I stay awake when I should be asleep, or over my lunch break at work. I can get it done, or nearly done, in a short period of time.

This afternoon, I've already squandered hours mulling about with no agenda in particular, once Mel and her mom left the apartment. Well of course you need to ease into it. But what would I do if I could focus? I want to write something substantial - a novel, a script, whatever - but that requires more time than I have, more dedication than I can offer. But to do something I could be doing any ("any") other time feels like a waste. I have been doing some side-blogging, sometimes reviewing TV shows and movies, or other cultural items. A lot of it is just writing about my own life, and indeed I have a post, part one of three, drafted recollecting the circumstances around Half-Past Eight PM. I could keep going with that but it feels unrewarding to use my time with that at this juncture, to use it writing about myself - again, something I can, and do, do in the hours between Mel laying her head down at 9:30 (some nights) and my own submission of sleep (sometimes 11 PM, sometimes midnight.)

I had a funny-ish post idea examining the life and career of Pat Sajak - how can he possibly be fulfilled being the middleman between a wheel and Vanna White for 35 years - but then Alex Trebek got sick and it felt callous to pick on his longtime timeslot neighbor the same week. (The post would implicitly, or explicitly, refer to Alex as a model of doing something worthwhile, but that just depresses me right now.)

I have ideas for stories. I had an idea for a potential sword-and-sandal type fantasy book, even though that's not really a genre I'm interested in reading. That's been on my list for a while. I have an idea for a book about a washed-up rock star, that always excites me to think of, and then saddens me that I can't find time to. I have Melancholy, always, and was just thinking about how that world will live in my mind for the rest of my life probably. I can often muster up the latest entry in TPI - and if you know what that means, then keep it to yourself because you're actually not supposed to. I have lots of ideas for stories in a similar vein, and indeed prior to getting this job I thought I might have a future cranking them out for ebooks. The ideas don't go away. The urgency to write them does. So then when I sit down I hardly feel like I know where to start.

Well, this is something. Maybe a fun warmup. I'm sitting in Waterpark Place, much as I did for all those years at the mall, typing away. Ramping up to... something, I'm sure. What exactly, I do not know. Short stories? Feh. But I did recently start thinking about modifying some of my old ideas no that my perspective and experience has changed. You know I was always skittish then because much of what I wrote about was hypothetically. I'd never been with someone, never been in love, never had a relationship or a person I cared about, so I could hardly imagine it. Now, twist, I can, I have a wealth of experience to draw on, but invoking it almost feels like a hex.

I can do a little bit. Chip away at the stone. Maybe next year I'll be in a headspace to deal with it, but it seems unlikely. If I couldn't in 2018, why would I in 2020?

Is this all I will ever be?

We'll see, we'll see.

Keep on rockin'
Scotto Williams