"So much to say"

That's generally how I feel. Like I'm about to burst at the seams with words of varying importance. During the nine hours I'm bound to my employer, it hurts the most, because when you're editing and proofing medical documents, you can't follow the impulse to break into sonnets, or to list possible side effects of cancer treatment in terza rima. The bosses generally frown on explaining benefits in haiku. The bosses generally frown, generally.

So when that five o'clock whistle blows (in my mind), I should get excited. Now--NOW!--I have the time to scribble, to cobble ideas together into something useful, to spin and spin and spin.

And just as that five o'clock whistle in my head begins to blow, I immediately grow tired, as I'm doing now. And the tempter enters (small t) and says, just go home. Flip on the TV. Take it easy. You have time. Later on, you can do all that. But you're too tired (busy/frustrated/hungry) to worry about that now.

And the days when I give in to the tempter's persuasion cobble themselves together into weeks. The weeks are sewn into months. The months are stitched into a patchwork of wasted years. And already I see the pattern forming. The familiar threads that weave into a swirl of regret. I used to want to be a writer.

Wait--used to? Still! i scream, I still want to be a writer!

But the pattern becomes the habit becomes the lifestyle. The clever success(ion) of knots--knot writing, knot submitting work to publishers, knot pursuing my dreams, knot demanding more of myself, knot believing in myself, knot thinking i'm good enough. Knot, knot, knot.

The answer's as old as Alexander the Great. Square up to the impossible knots, draw my sword, and slash slash slash.

But the sword feels heavy today.