Ah hell. I sit here bleary-eyed, over-stressed and worried about the projects I’m working on. I’ve gotten my latest schedules and they don’t look good. One project is way over budget and I’m trying to hammer it back into place without being verbally eviscerated by those responsible for the budget hemorrhage.

And then Kinko’s lost one of my projects for about three days. I got to know Tom at Kinko’s intimately. He saw the rage and panic in my eyes and knew . . . he knew that if he didn’t locate this project fast he’d be wearing his ass as a hat.

It’s been found. All is happy in lala land. Except me, that is. I should be happy about a million things, but I’m not. For some reason even the resolutions are irritating me.

I walk through the day with good cheer. “Hey Chuck! What’s up Bob?” (If you knew my working space, you’d know that no one named Chuck or Bob work with me. In fact, no one works with me. I’m home. Alone. Though I still have conversations with Chuck and Bob.) But it’s all a feint. It’s a lie. Deep inside I’m a bubbling miasma of stress and bitterness. Mostly bitterness, though I don’t know why.

Perhaps it’s because I want to do real writing but lack the topics. In reality, I’m aware that my audio biography is a form of mental masturbation. It’s here for my pleasure and the odds of anyone else enjoying it are slim. I haven’t really added anything else to this website for a long time. I have no story ideas, no essay ideas, no movie ideas. I don’t even have an idea that would fill a fortune cookie. Wait, maybe I do:

”Don’t ask me, damn it. I’m a friggin’ cookie. Seek professional help.”

There. That works.

Secretly I think I miss a certain era of my past. An era that lasted barely over a year, but it was a blast. A simple blast. It was when I was at the defunct dot com and worked off of a folding table. After a few months I was moved from sharing a table with my compadre Chad to each of us having our very own. We shared a room with two other editors, Jim and Todd. They were music editors. Chad and I were movies. The four of us planned the majority of the website on a weekly basis.

And we had fun. When we’d get mad we’d throw things and laugh at each other. We’d make fun of one another. And for no reason whatsoever, someone would suddenly scream out, “I AM THE LAW.” And we’d all laugh. Ha ha.

Now I’m alone. When I get mad I yell to the cat. She flips me of and leaves the room. I yell out “I am the law” and no one responds. All of my correspondence is done through email. Human contact is nearly at a minimum. Not that it’s bad. I generally don’t like people much. Oh well.

Maybe I’ll put in a complaint about myself to my supervisor. “He’s just too negative. But he makes good coffee.”