Things Are Happening

Yesterday I started work on a story at about 1:00, and although I took time off in between to eat, watch pieces of Office Space, go to yoga class, and fuck around on the internet, I was still working at about 9:30. I'm not very happy that it took me so many hours to produce 4,000 words in draft form, but I guess it's better than producing nothing at all. I'm kind of beating my fists against the ending, and wondering whether the framing device will or should hold up, and I feel like there's something else I have to say in the story, on the tip of my tongue, and can't quite get it out. I think I need a few days or weeks to let it rest before cutting it open again.

I have been given the gift of a week to do nothing but write, and although I'm nervous about the source of the gift, it's still overwhelmingly a good thing. Today is the day I need to get down to business at it, so as not to waste the gift, and I've already procrastinated away two hours on Jon Stewart and Slate and, now, this blog. I have something to do at 1:00 that will take an indeterminate amount of time, and I'm pretty sure I'm just going to take a book with me instead of my laptop - that would be really pretentious, right? - but if I can't get the machine clanking away between now and then, I might compromise and take a notebook. There are always more characters and storylines to be brainstormed, always more Luquenora words to be conjured up.

I've mentioned before that it bothers me how I tend to get excited about certain things in my life, effuse about them to others, and then have to downplay that excitement when my life takes a turn in another direction. In the last few months I've made a concerted effort to change this. Because there's no changing the dilettantish aspect, I've just started to shut my damn mouth about things, tried hard not to blurt out everything going on for me to everyone who asks. This isn't particularly hard, but I think it adds to the general theme of standoffishness that colors much of my interaction with the world of late. I'm in a position of not having to consider this standoffishness a problem for the immediate future - a blessing - but for a long time now it has been one.

In the last couple of weeks a lot of things have happened that, on my old anonymous blog, I would have burst forth about in great geysers of melodramatic prose. But the situation is still enough in flux that I'm embarrassed to say anything, really, only to have to retract it in a few days when I have more information. I don't think anyone would blame me for the uncertainty or the change-and-change-again aspect of this information, because it's all external, not me being flaky. But I'd rather just say nothing until I know more.

At this point I feel like I'm being deliberately cryptic, but I think that's a jerky thing to do on blogs, so I assure you I'm not. I'd rather tell you that I feel muzzled than write short posts that don't hint anything is happening at all. THINGS ARE HAPPENING. They're just not happening with consistency or speed or transparency.

Transparency would be nice, actually. In a couple of weeks, when all of this uncertainty passes, that's going to be my keyword for this blog.

Something I want to tell everybody but I'm afraid to, because they'll judge me for taking such an action when I am not actually working at a paying job: I bought a new laptop. I am still mourning about it a little because I needed a new one and just plain couldn't afford a Mac. So I bought an HP with Windows 7 for, including the cost of Office software and after rebates et al, just under $500. Less than half as much as a comparable Mac.

And I really like this one. It's got everything I need and some extra bells and whistles besides. I'm sorry, Apple Gods! I wanted to buy my third Mac laptop. I just couldn't manage it right now. And for various (legitimate!) reasons, I needed a new laptop.

Plus, it's shiny.

OKAY that's enough procrastination. Off I go into the wild.