What can I say to you? So I slept late. So what. I was tired. Sure, sure, I have no real reason to be so utterly exhausted. But you know what? It could be that you make me tired, what with all your lofty expectations, your self-imposed deadlines, always impossible, your ridiculous sign posts that become obsolete almost as soon as you’ve put them up. I keep passing them by, laughing at them now that enough time has passed to see them clearly: Finish story by May 1. Ha. Write screenplay. Um, huh? Get literary agent. Don’t make it burn any worse than it is.

I can’t live up to what you want me to be. The new job hasn’t helped yet, what with its new stresses and learning new ways of doing things and trying not to forget every new step and trying so hard to be good. My dreams are filled up with it. I have a stack of procedures home over the weekend to study, just to give myself a leg up next week. Did you know this would happen? Did you think I’d be able to get up early and write anyway, even in the face of all this?

And no, the latest unsigned rejection slip folded in with the first page of my story (the discarded page my least favorite way of learning I’m not wanted) has nothing to do with this.

It’s all about knowing I am a disappointment, and yet being unable to do anything to stop it. My heart should be with my writing, but it’s pulled here, and pulled there, distracted. I truly don’t know how I did it before. I don’t know how other people do it. Sometimes I feel like this is how it’s going to be, forever, and it makes me feel hopeless. At times chocolate can help this. But I don’t think that’s going to do it today.