Writing e-mail cuts down my word count. I’ve noticed the trend. I’ll sit down to write a mail or two, press Alt-C, the word count button, and realize with utter dread the number of words I wasted on a private mail. Of course, it doesn’t take too much to remind myself that it wasn’t wasted. Correspondences never are. Without them in some form, the friendships fall apart. I’ve known countless people where I was sure it was going to be a long-lasting friendship, only to find that person gone from my life a few years later. You never know who’ll make the list. I’m good when it comes to keeping in touch with people, at least people I like. I feel as if I have a handful of very close friends, and not many acquaintances. I was never good at acquaintances. It’s the small talk. I don’t like the small talk because I rarely care what the other person is saying. This is only the case when I don’t know the person. If I know them, I do care, but when I’m talking to someone who I don’t know, what they say, unless it’s amusing or pertinent in some way to my life, flies in one ear and rapidly dissolves. I’m a bad person that way. When I tell people this, they usually respond, but David, how do you expect to get to know the person and make them your friend if you don’t put forth the effort? I wish I knew but it does happen—i.e., I have a few friends.

The reason the word count freaked me out is because of my theory relating to an infinite well of good ideas. I’ve heard it a number of times from different people. These people are never worried about running out of good ideas. There’s some place in them where these ideas well up, and while they’re at times surprised by the idea itself, they’re never surprised that they have them. My theory (and suspicion) is that that I have a limited number of ideas. I worry that if I waste them, I won’t get replacements. It should explain why I was concerned at the number of words I wrote in the mail. What if that’s all I had for the day and nothing else came out of me?

It’s the same concern I have when I mine my past for story ideas or characters. The definite trend in my writing is that stories based loosely on actual events usually come out better. I’ve only been alive for so long, and my fear is that I’ll run out of actual events to report on. My inability to recall most of my past doesn’t help me here.

That was a long break between writing the last paragraph and writing what follows. I had a pain in my head, and my wrists were hurting, and the moon was bright. I didn’t see the moon, but I’m sure it was bright. All of that convinced me that a small Seinfeld break would help uncork my creativity. The Seinfeld break only whetted my appetite for mindless distractions, and I found one when I sat down to play a first-person shooter, World War II simulation, named Day of Defeat. There was a time, and I remember it fondly, when I was terribly addicted to this game. It is a very old game, a mod built for the Half Life engine. The first time around, I played it an unhealthy amount. The last straw, which is similar to most of my last straws for my addictions, was when I spent an entire weekend doing nothing but playing Day of Defeat and eating packaged food. I don’t think I showered. After that experience, I uninstalled the game and, as is the only way I control my addictions, destroyed the installation CDs. So, yeah, I spent the last three hours playing that game. So what? You going to shoot me or something?

I can’t say I spent too much time thinking about what I was going to write. Surprisingly enough, watching Seinfeld and playing a game with the sound of explosions and gun fire didn’t do much to help my headache, which has built a nest in the back right hemisphere of my brain. I’m yawning pathologically now, so I’m thinking part of it is caused by not enough sleep.

This week is short. I’m leaving for Taiwan on Friday morning. Wednesday is chock full of holiday parties, and I think I have three meetings scheduled for the entire week. A relaxing time that should give me time to write. It’s still too early to edit any of my vignettes or short stories, and you know what that means: more meaningless short stories and vignettes are coming your way. I’m hit the beginning of my second page, and with nothing more to say, I’ll leave it at what it is, a pitiful display of musing for the sake of musing. Don’t you love it?