Mr. Positivity had come to town. The next week, Mr. Outside World joined him. On Tuesday, they stopped by my house to see how I was doing. They were sick of me complaining. They were sick of everything going weird in my life. They said if you want to write, you should write, you should stop c’ing. And so I find myself here, writing, thinking of what I need to write about animals or reminiscing about proms.

Time was when things happened. Thing happened daily. They don’t happen as often, but things are still happening. Just today, well, before I get into that, let’s talk about yesterday. Just yesterday, well, maybe we shouldn’t go there either. There are always things going on, is what I’m trying to say. And I’m going to stop clearing my throat and start telling you about it. Right after I think about tomorrow and reminisce the past some more.

I couldn’t decide if she was pretty. She wasn’t fat, a good starting point. I watched her from the back of the classroom. She was skinny but undeveloped, if you know what I mean. Most of the girls in my class hadn’t developed yet, and I wasn’t sure what the big deal with developing was.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“You’re thinking too much again. You get in these ruts when you think too much. You need to react, be an instinctual animal.”

I didn’t know what rut she was talking about.

Keep going. Nothing gets written unless you type on the page. This silence is again tough. I’m not bitter about it, just understanding where it comes from. Not writing makes writing difficult. It’s a twofold problem: I can’t think of a story is the first fold, and the second fold is even if I came up with a story (and not a scripted story, since those usually come stillborn), I’m not sure I still have the tools to put words on paper. A child screams in the corner of the bucks of stars. It’s more of a shrill screech than a scream. He’s bored, but it’s hot outside, and he would probably scream louder if he were in the streets or a hot apartment. Civilization is good for many things, least of which is the air conditioning.

My butt hurts from riding my bicycle this morning. It’ll pass, and it would be much worse if I were still on the bike. This was my first ride of the season, and we left early to try to avoid as much of the ridiculous heat as possible. It was a long good ride with only a few difficult parts.

It’s not only stories that are about choices, life is also about choices. Even the most insignificant choice may have huge ramifications. You shouldn’t worry about whether the choice matters; you should only worry about whether you are making the correct choice.

I’m coveting that guy’s seat over there. I’m sitting on a hard wooden chair, and my butt still hurts from my bicycle ride. He’s reading a paper in the cushy chair next to the outlet. I could take the cushy chair next to it, but it doesn’t have an outlet. Ah, dilemmas, dilemmas. This is what I mean about choice!

I chose the cushy chair without the outlet. I don’t regret it yet. It’s the little choices that you don’t think about that will turn into anything that is important. The seat smells a bit funny. The guy next to me looks like he’s wrapping up. He’s…I’m making my move! I’m now in the chair I’ve been dreaming about since I arrived, cushy, close to the outlet, ideal people watching position where I can see the entire bucks of stars. But it’s a bit warmer over here. I’m closer to the window. I guess all choices have possibilities and drawbacks. I’m not saying I’m going to leave this chair. I’m working it good now, and it’s better than anywhere else, I’m just saying that when you get what you want, you sometimes realize that it wasn’t what you wanted in the first place, if you know what I mean.

An animal has no choices. He never has to choose—not important choices, that is. He chooses whether to go left or right, he chooses whether to chance the watering hole, not knowing whether a predator will eat him. But he doesn’t worry about moral choices.

So many distractions, and I still have 1,500 words to write. I figure if I write 2k words a week, I’ll get nowhere very, very fast. Baby steps, I remind myself on an almost endless basis, baby steps. So here I am, still thinking and trying to figure out what it is I’m thinking about—or, and I should do this more often, convincing myself to stop thinking and start doing. I’ll do it when I figure out what it is, which means more thinking. It’s a vicious cycle.

Smile, enjoy yourself. You’re sitting and thinking. Where can you find more fun that what you’re doing now? You have all the time in the world, You are slightly caffeinated, and you can run up and buy more pastries and coffee anytime you want. Where else would you like to be? You have many words that say nothing left to say. You’re good at this nothing say. I wish I could say nothing every day. It’s only when I’ve completely exhausted saying nothing that I can pretend it’s time to say something. I don’t do enough of this. Once a week, not nearly enough, as I repeat myself to pull in more words.

Stop. More words follow this. It’s almost time for me to start again, start a story. Childhood but without the school. School sucks. It’s about the time spent outside of school that’s interesting. The time spent in the basement, in the movie theatre, in the parents’ cars.

Too many thoughts still percolate in my mind, and I haven’t finished consternating yet. Once I finish consternating, watch out world! (As if I’ve never said that before.) I have to find the time somewhere. Once I have the time. Ah, who am I kidding? It’s not about the time but about the will. I always have the time when I don’t have the will. My mind spins on work stuff and then wants to relax. I need to give up the relaxing and find something more, find a way to relax without worrying about energy levels and word counts and saying fucking something.

I have to learn to observe again. What happened to my observations? I seem to observe my internal world well enough. Why can’t I push it to my external world? It’s so easy to not do these things. Everything is important.