A Life of Quiet Desperation

10:06am:  Wake up dog-tired.  Literally.  Freya was sick all night and kept me up.  Poor thing.  Neck all sore from sleeping next to her with my arm over her.  Damn you old age!

10:09am:  Think about what I have to get done today.  40 pages.  A blog.  Catch up on emails and buy more grocs and damn, I need car insurance and bills have to get paid and

10:10am: Crawl back into bed.

10:11am: Assume fetal position.

11:15am: Guilt overcomes fetal position.  Get out of bed.  Feed doggies, worry about Freya, eat breakfast of yogurt and fruit and convince myself this is healthy.

11:40am: Decide to see if anyone read the blog.  Read comments.  Worry that I’m being too boring.  Need to have more excitement in life to write about.  Need to attract more readers. Begin thinking on next topic.  John Carter movie.

12:05pm:  Try to write.  Decide to read emails instead.  Respond to everyone.  Great long boring emails.

12:54pm:  Go out for coffee, bring laptop, load up novel.  Look at it.  Begin to swear.

1:01pm: Stop swearing.  All of the 60 pages that I’ve written have been reformatted so that no paragraphs are indented.  WTF?  How did I do that?  Now I have a choice, manually fix them all or find out why this happened.  Each could take a good hour.

1:06pm: Buy cookie to help with the decision-making process.

1:07pm: Decide not to worry about the reformatting and forge ahead.  Add more tension to a chapter that desperately needs it (after all, it was titled Lou Goes for a Walk so you KNOW something’s missing there.)  Fix some inconsistencies.  Add a few new chapters to improve pacing.  Delete about 10 pages for the same reason.  Pound away until I have another 20 pages fixed and finished.

3:22pm: Decide to take dogs for a walk but it’s pissing rain and windy and I have not brought a good coat.  So they get to run in the park instead while I squint at them without glasses and think about how I’m going to change around an important sequence of events in my book.

4:12pm: Realize I didn’t really eat a healthy lunch (a cookie) and grab some salad at home.

4:32pm: Need to write the blog.  But wait, there is a hair growing out of my forehead.  WTF?  I ponder how this could happen.  “Oi, we got a new build order boss.”  “Lemme see that.  Says here we are to, what, grow a hair on his forehead?  Are they mad?”  “Could be a mistake, boss.  You know, a typo.  Something like ‘hair for head’ not ‘fore head hair.”  “Damn bureaucrats!  Well we better get to it.”  “What, a hair for his forehead?”  “Yup, ours is not to question why.”

4:37pm: Pluck hair from forehead.

4:38pm: Blog dammit, must write that blog but wait, a friend has logged onto FB.  Maybe I should say hi.

6:22pm: Saying hi took longer than I thought.  Damn my friends for being interesting.

6:32pm:  Start blog but freeze up.  It isn’t funny!  Frustrated.  Turn on TV.  For just a second.  Ohhh, hockey game.  Catch up on emails while watching hockey game and pretend I’m doing something constructive.

7:06pm: Another FB friend logs on but logs off quickly to get something to eat.  Now is my chance.  Blog dammit, blog.

7:07pm: End up searching internet for solution to writing problem earlier, you know, the stupid indenting problem.  Find solution.  Go through a re-reformat the whole thing.

7:33pm: Wonder if I have other hair that need to be plucked but no, have to be strong.  Begin writing blog.  Have to be quick.  FB friend logging back soon.

7:41pm: Think about writing a blog about procrastination instead of John Carter.  But decide to put that off to another day.

7:48pm: New blog started.  John Carter Review.

8:00pm: Friend relogs onto FB.  Chatting ensues.  Eat supper.   Feed doggies.

9:15pm: FB friend logs off.  I Panic.  Need to get 20 pages done and JC review finished or I won’t have a post for today and I won’t have what I promised my friend, Sean.

9:16pm: Roll up sleeves.

9:17pm: Brew coffee.  Pour into mug.

9:18pm: Begin to write like mad.

9:57pm: Finish John Carter Review and post.  Grab more coffee.  Eat chocolate bar.  Back to writing.

11:15pm: Finish last rewrite pages for Sean.  Thank god they weren’t a complete disaster.  Send off.

11:16pm: Collapse in front of TV.  Catch up on emails.  Make vow to be better organized tomorrow.