It’s early morning writing on a pretend summer day. The morning faked me out—I woke up to a terribly sunny day, and expected it to remain that way. During my walk to the Sunday morning breakfast place, the sun slid behind thirteen layers of clouds, which moved into place thanks to a cold wind that ripped through my short-sleeved t-shirt and shorts. Oh well. I guess I’m not in Kansas (or NYC) anymore.

The day turned out nice after all. I spent the morning wandering the streets, and then I had a hankering for home improvement. I went to the local home-improvement store, bought some shelving and an extension cord for yard work (which I never got to), and then decided to buy replacement switches for some of my timed, outdoor lighting. The switch in the back doesn’t work anymore (mostly thanks to my tinkering), and the one in the front is off by a few hours, but I’m afraid to change because I might break it as I did the one in the back. I thought this a good opportunity to begin wiring my house in preparation for turning it into a fully computerized house, one of my dreams upon its purchase.

After discovering that the home-improvement store did not sell any gadgetry for home automation, and realizing that the thirty dollars that I would spend on high-quality timers would better be spent on high quality, computer-controlled switches, I made a trek to an electronics store. I spent many hours wandering around the store and discovered they it, too, did not carry what I needed, and left the store despondent, having purchased nothing, which for me in an electronics store is almost unheard of.

I did manage to put the shelves back up in the laundry room, but that was the extent of my home-improvement activities. Perhaps I’ll get to fixing up the garden this week. The first step, I always say, is buying the equipment. Everything after that is all superfluous. (If only life worked like that.)

I’m filling in these words to make my goal. I’m going to talk about splits and goals and Goals. All of it is meaningless. I’ll save you the surprise: I failed yet again at ulterior goals. I don’t know what’s wrong with my writing, but I’ve hit upon another story blocker. I’ll have a full deck of these if I keep at it. As it is now, I’ll continue pounding out the words, editing and adding to make my goal. What’s more interesting is Doolies’s side of the engagement story I posted above. As I hinted at before, her recollection of the dialogue is much better than mine was. It makes me sound more romantic, which, of course, I am, even if I didn’t take her for a ride on the horses—a romantic cliché, if you will.

The rain set in after dark today, which is no excuse for not going for a bicycle ride. I did drink two shots of yummy caffeine (in the form of a mocha and an Americano) in two different coffee houses as I tried to break free of my problems with story telling. The caffeine did little for me except make me anxious during my drives. I’m not sure what has happened to its effects on me, but caffeine has been doing little except making me a prolific journal writer, not something I ever aspired to be.

I’m adding the last three-hundred or so words up here because I can’t bear to look below. It’s terrible. Awful. As I said, it talks of goals, and then it throws words against the page, which, I thought, might look like parts of a story, but turned out to be exceptionally pathetic words, filled with consternated thoughts and constipated stories. When they said writing was hard—whoever “they” may be—they certainly weren’t joking. I wish it was a little less hard a painful these days. But I’ll preserve and figure something out one of these days.

I return to work tomorrow morning after our engagement trip to NYC. I’ve been keeping my eye on my e-mail over the week, so I have a vague idea of what I’m in for, lots of e-mail cleanup and a few outstanding issues that kept looking for me while away. I’ll get to it when I get to it. I’m hoping to bring Doolies’s ring to the jeweler on Tuesday so they can remake it, and I can get it back to Doolies. I felt terrible taking it away form her at the airport in New Jersey, but it was either that or let her walk around with tape wrapped around its back forever. After spending all that money on wrapping the diamonds all the way around the ring, I didn’t want to have half of them covered up. And, plus, it makes Doolies a better Doolies. It’s all about patience, something I have yet to learn (i.e., to make David a better Davids, not a better Doolies).

The two-thousand split is another part of my goal (small-g). I know I talk about goals too often on this thing, but goals are what keep me working toward something. I’m an external motivatee in that I need external motivation to get things done. Thanks to a form of schizophrenia, I am able to motivate myself externally through voices in my head (and on the page), which brings about these discussions about goals and the Goal, and the other shit I waste my time typing. Getting back to the two-thousand split, the new goal is to write a minimum of 1,000 words in story/voyeur/character/synopsis form every day. The other 1,000 words can be like this: crap about my life, my failures as a writer, how much lint is in my navel for that day, etcetera.

I failed again at my morning exercises. I don’t think this bodes well for getting back into my writing rhythm. Vacations always do that to me: I come back, and it takes me a while to get back into my routine. Not that vacations are a bad thing, but I’m a man of habit, and when my habits are broken, it takes me a while to reinstate them into my simian brain.

Man, am I nervous. Sandra sits next to me, unaware that over the next three hours I will change our lives forever. What waits in my left breast pocket is the key to that change: a small green box hiding an engagement ring. I feel again for my pocket to reassure myself that the ring is safe. This has been a long time in coming, three years to be exact.

Why the fuck can’t I write anything? I keep thinking of nothing and then trying to write stories. I told myself I wouldn’t do this now. I even changed computers, thinking that a new blank screen would allow me to find inspiration. I was wrong. I’m not finding it. I’m not finding anything. Have I said fuck yet?

The Bears family lived in a large house. Momma, Papa, and baby led a simple life, enjoying simple foods, and simple tastes. They were an average family, living in an average house in an average town. The Papa—my god, this hurts. This hurts terribly.

Talk about funks: 1,000 words of funk.

He held the tip of the sword at the throat of Hendrick, daring him to move and give him an excuse to drive the point through his throat.

These words fucking hurt!

Terror sees me. I duck from it but it sees nonetheless, not so easily fooled.

The plastic ball was green, white, and blue, blown up by their father, and thrown into the air by their mother. The three boys batted it around on the grassy hill where their parents made the picnic. Their father had found this place in the park years ago, and every weekend, they visited the hill, bringing the picnic blanket and basket, and the dog, and playing games through the day. They never left until the sun fully set, savoring each moment on the grassy hill.

That day, they went further than they normally did, moving beyond the grassy hill and past another grassy hill, to a yet third grassy hill. The crowds had found this part of the park, and as crowds do, they attracted others, and soon the hills were full of people and their children. The family liked other people, but they used the weekends to spend time with each other and escape from the people, and they raced across the crowded hills until they arrived at the third hill. They had never been this far, but their mother opened the blanket and began unpacking the picnic. The boys tossed the ball after their father inflated it with large, exaggerated breaths.

Peter, the oldest, hit the ball away from the hill, and the three boys chased it as it rolled down off the hill. Their mother and father listened to them shriek and yell as they first ran and then tumbled down the grassy hill. The dog laid by the picnic table, exhausted from chasing the family across the three hills. It decided it was best to bask in the late afternoon sun then chase the boys down yet another hill.

Their father spoke to their mother, describing his week’s adventures at the office. They laughed at his tales of intrigue, and his descriptions of his co-workers, swine or back stabbers or butt kissers, they were all characters in their father’s tales to their mother. After attending many of his parties at the bank, she grew to know these characters, and to know that he, while basing much of his stories on what happened, took great liberties in the telling of the tales to amuse their mother, who, since she spent all of her time with the three boys, missed the adult interactions she foreswore when choosing the boys over her work.

It was when the shrieking stopped that both their father and their mother stopped their conversation. The dog, a white sheep dog with long straight hair and a nose so wet it dripped, poked its head up and looked sideways as if sensing, perhaps through the absence of yelling or with some other dog sense, that something was wrong. Their parents called out, and when there was a delay in answering, dropped the preparation for the picnic lunch and walked toward the top of the hill where the boys had tumbled down. As they got closer, their father sped up until he was running, their mother not too far behind.

As they arrived at the top of the hill, they heard the sound of a river, and when they looked they saw a stream swelled by the week’s rain making its way through the hilly valley. They did not know that water ran in this park, and when their mother followed the river she screamed, pointing at the plastic ball as it floated down river. Their father saw two of the boys at the stream’s edge, but didn’t see the third. He yelled and pointed and ran down the hill, looking frantically for the third. He identified the two younger boys, but did not see Peter.

The boys did not answer their father until he arrived at the stream’s edge and shook the youngest Norman by the shoulders. Norman couldn’t look at his father and pointed down river, where the ball had been. The stream traveled quickly, and the ball was no longer visible. Their father waded into the water until he the stream came up to his waist about in the middle. He began wading downriver, lifting his feet and floating, calling out Peter’s name. Their mother was pulling the two younger boys away from the river, calling out to their father to find Peter. She held the two boys by their shoulders and wouldn’t let go of them.

Fuck this. So much fucking. So much boring shit with no point and no purpose. Yeah, 1,000 words, not going to happen. No imagination, no words, no anything. And so my streak of failures continues, unabated by anything called progress or success.