Practice. Practice. The chair: four silver steel legs sprout out in a star pattern. The seat and back are of a rounded cone design cut into smoothed wood. On the back is the revealing feature, a loop connected to the arms of the two rear legs made of the same material giving the chair its light and modern appearance.

Breaking out the skill set. It’s not as clean as when it was used daily, but that’s okay. I just don’t want to waste this month plus off and look back and wonder why I have little (in the way of writing) to show for it. That’s the right way to think about it. (Food break.)

I’m calmer today—or at least right now. I feel like I’m reaching out blindfolded for something to hold to steady myself. It’s not my anxiety that I’m talking about. (Did you notice that I refer to writing as talking? This isn’t the first time. Putting words on paper feels more like talking for me. When I think about writing, I see (more interruptions) the words pop into my head like I do when talking, but instead of talking, I write. That’s one of my issues: when I’m not there (you know, in the zone, groove, etc.), I can only speak of subjects that I either have much knowledge about or I care passionately about. Everything else comes out as repetitive and quickly bores me. I can’t imagine what it does to the person listening.) Getting back, the thing I’m searching blindly for is my written voice, the noise that says more than consternations and complaints.

I’m more focused at this moment than I’ve been in a rather long time. If anything, the only anxiety I feel is the slight fear that follows all my initial writings (i.e., the first draft, the throwing down new ideas part): the fear that I’m going to come to the end of a sentence and have nowhere to go and nothing to say. This is less of a fear when editing. Editing is more like sculpting after you’ve found the rock and it has spoken to you in the new age sense.

(More interruptions.) Original writing (like original sin, I guess) is like getting out of the water and feeling the cold air on your wet skin. You want to jump back in to warm up but know that you’ll eventually have to get out and suffer the cold. I’m not sure what that analogy has to do with anything but I’m sticking with it. Raw thoughts are like that: most have sharp edges. Okay, that was the last bad analogy, I promise. (It’s easy to promise when you have nothing more to say. At least nothing more in musing form.)