Anxiety builds in me, whether sitting in unexpected traffic or waiting for a table at a restaurant where we never wait. It’s the unanticipated part that causes most of my anxiety. Where the wait is expected, I mentally prepare for it, leave myself plenty of time. I have fought anxiety lately with strange levels of failure.

It’s the first of the year, the time to push anxiety aside and reflect on important yearly goals. My new quest: write words that make me smile. I sometimes forget why I started writing. Sure, there was my dream of writing the good life: living off the acclaim of my best-selling great American novel while the Doolies supported me in my quest to visit as many different coffee houses as possible in the great state of New York City. Not that I have given up on that dream. It still hits me at strange times along with my dream of starting an independent video game company (they’re now more popular if not profitable). These dreams wait in the wings to rear up at unexpected moments and threaten to take over my better (or is it worse?) senses.

Getting back to smiling, as I read through my old entries, even the consternated ones, it sounded as if I was having fun. I don’t remember if I was, but there was character in the writing that seems missing in my shorter entries and storytelling. I’ve noticed this absence for a while. Part of the dissonant tone comes from the amount of writing. It’s most apparent when I keep travel journals. Since I force myself to write every day, even when I am tired or headachy or downright bitter, I capture my personality better. With lots of writing, I end up focusing less on the act of writing and more on the content. That I’m doing activities that I can write about doesn’t hurt either.

Doolies and Jennifer joined me at the coffee shop. Doolies has picked up photography as a hobby. She is carrying around our wimpy digital camera and shooting lots of photographs. She bought a book (with lots of photos!) on the basic techniques. Ah, she just left us. She exhausted all photographic opportunities at the coffee shop (lots of coffee -mug and expressive-David shots) and decided to wander the neighborhood for new subjects. She’s still trying to decide what type of camera she wants. My digital camera has seen better days. It has terrible shutter lag—that’s the time between pressing the button and taking the photograph—and an awful flash that never seems to get the timing right. The big question (at least in my mind) is size. How big of a camera is she willing to carry around, since I already told her I will not carry her camera when we travel. (With that said, Doolies is very persuasive—or what it as: manipulative—and it is likely I’ll end up carrying it. Just don’t tell her I said so—I’m sticking this in the middle of lots of words, where it is less likely to be read by her. I should go back and remove any mention of her name from this paragraph. She tends not to read text unless she’s in it. Seeing to the quality of my writing lately, this is a very valid strategy.)

Before they joined me at the newly renamed Caffé Vita, I was rereading old sewcrates.com entries. I know: my narcissism is truly boundless. Clearly the length and consistency of writing will help improve the quality and apparent sense of enjoyment, i.e., the sense from the reader, since we know my sense will be: it’s time to write . . . again? Lately, my words feel like words. They don’t have energy. I need to return to clever writings. I’ve been warned that cleverness is a bit of a turnoff in writing. Trying to impress people with fancy words does not a good essay make. But the thing is (and you should start worrying when I talk about things), I don’t care. I want to enjoy writing this, which means I have to enjoy reading this, which means, well, I need to use the voice. And yes, Dune did pop into my head after writing that.

I started this entry on my comfortable recliner. I worried over whether I would write and my general level of disinterest. Because they’re words, and I love all my words, I’ll glue them below. They’re slightly related to what’s above. We watched “The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind” again yesterday. (I had hopes of watching “When Harry Met Sally” for my New Years activities, but Jennifer had never seen Eternal Sunshine, and we had to remedy that oversight. Kaufman, the screenwriter, did wonders with the way time flows. I don’t have his skill.

I planned to write today, and here I am. My fingers are tired from all of the photo and website editing. Once I start organizing and categorizing, it’s difficult for me to get away. You’ll notice all my photo albums are tagged at the album level. I still don’t have the functionality to mass-tag the photos at the photo level. I can tag them by editing each photo, but that would take a long, long time.

I finished a short coffee after waking up this morning. I started writing before it kicked in. I hoped that funny would follow the caffeine. At least that’s how it used to work. It hasn’t worked that way in a while. Perhaps I’m hungry. Or maybe I had my coffee a bit too late. Instead of drinking coffee, I settled into internet perusing, which is never a good way to start the day. I have this feeling I missed the important part of the day. It’s a good thing the day is extra long and work free.

The last thing I wanted to do is to sit and write. I keep thinking of little NAIS projects that could fill my time. I’m in the process of ripping all my DVDs to put them on my home server. I have this dream of watching all my movies without having to get off the couch. A movie is churning away downstairs. It must almost be finished. Perhaps I’ll go and check on it. Anything would be better than this.

One of the excuses I keep giving myself for not writing is that I don’t have time to write. I look over my schedule and it’s full. I have to wake up early, which means going to sleep early. When I sleep early, I barely have time for dinner and a movie with Doolies before washing up. Then I’m at work most of the day, and with the exception of the little-work holiday season (which I filled with NAIS development), I don’t have extra time to write. I usually only take the van in the morning (Doolies picks me up on most evenings for my HOV-ness), and before my coffee, I’m not sure I could write. I’m thinking of drinking coffee before I go to the van in the morning. I’ve said this many times before: I’m a man of habit. The problem I have is creating good habits. Once they’re there, I can stick with them (until I accidentally break them—picking up broken habits is as hard as starting fresh). The key is to create good habits in the first place. Perhaps writing in the morning should be my next attempt.

These are just long-winded excuses, of course. And these aren’t my usual fancy consternated excuses, where I’ll look back in a couple of days in amazement at my clever words and ill-formed sentences.

Doolies is cooking breakfast downstairs and I’m getting hungry. Maybe I’ll continue this later. I don’t know. I should push through. I think there are some useful words in the later paragraphs that I haven’t found yet. I’m not sure I even know what useful words look like. They would probably be organized and directed at something. They wouldn’t be random meanderings of useless intentions. Ah. I don’t even know anymore. I’m not sure what if anything I bring to the party.

Ziggy joined me with his oversized bunny rabbit. He ripped its nose off some time ago, and he continues to chew at its plastic stump. He pulls stuffing out through its nose and leaves a mess on the rug. We’re good at cleaning up after him. His housetraining is getting better. Some days he’s better than others. He had a particularly good day on Sunday. Today hasn’t been as good.

I’m writing to fill up space. What other type of writing is there?

I left the Castle and forced myself to go to the coffee shop. Not that there was much forcing necessary. I’m very easy when it comes to sitting in a quiet place and drinking coffee. I need to do things. I have had this revelation before. When I do things, I have things to talk about. Looking back at my better writings, besides my pitiful story attempts, the writing comes about when I’m travelling, usually when I’m too tired to write and I sit down to relay all the happenings. I am most interested in rereading those.

I had an idea for a story last night. It’s gone now. I’m sure it would have been terrible, but it’s sad that I can’t remember it. I have to write things down. I need to talk to people. I need to be less scared of talking to people. I need to meet new and interesting people. Hell, I need to meet boring people and give them a chance to interest me. I need to stop judging or guessing what people are thinking, and instead listen to them. It’s so easy for me to write these thoughts sitting alone in the corner of a coffee house. If only these words transformed into actions.

Transformation of thoughts into actions. That was something the story was about. I keep grasping its edges before it slips away again.

The internet calls and like its obedient dog I slither into its cold embrace. This writing is harder than I remember, harder in every way. I need a project to get me moving again; something to take the cobwebs out of the brains and start them spinning. The hourly NEQID initiative needs another initiative.

I finished this entry at a respectable 1,853 words. I’m not counting again, so don’t worry. I just like to check in every now and again. I should have meshed those two halves together. I repeated many of the same ideas, and I could probably slice off about a thousand of those words and have something tighter and more interesting. But it’s getting late and I’m hungry. Doolies and Jennifer are napping. I’m going to check if they’re ready for dinner. I’m hoping for pizza, but they might have their hearts set on chicken legs in the oven. I’ll leave you not knowing which they decide. Mysteries work better that way.