wrung

I'm sitting outside, I've had a fresh cup of coffee, the sun is shining and I'm even wearing a jacket. I should be able to put some good and fun words on paper about something I love, either the Dallas Stars and Rich Peverley or The Great British Bake-Off, but instead, I can't. Every sentence that comes from my fingers is flat and insipid, and my head feels both fuzzy and empty, like a washcloth wrung out to dry and left to hang stiff.

It's been a difficult few months for yours truly - getting unexpectedly laid off, having false hope abound, losing money and time and friends. Supposedly, all this nonsense should have resulted in epic writings, book-length musings on the nature of stress, and whether or not we need to change ourselves, and not the slow diminishing of my ability to spell and write and move people with my words.

The sun plays across my eyelids as I stop typing and stare upward at the porch roof, and then bounce off onto one of the websites that counts as a distraction for me. I'm empty right now, a vessel used and poured out, and while in the movies, this is when I'd "go crazy! Spend the rest of my savings on a vacation and just get out of town for a while!" I can't do that, because this is real life, and real life means not knowing how much longer I'll have to rely on those savings to pay my rent, or how long I'll need to keep eating meals at my parents' house to not buy as many groceries, and we don't always get what we want.

I mean, sometimes we do, but we don't know that we don't want it. I wanted out of my previous job, which was a bad fit in all directions and was actively making me sick from a different kind of stress, but then I knew I had a paycheck coming in every two weeks, could save money and occasionally spend it, and didn't have to obsess over what came next. In the long run, sure, it's great that I'm out of there, even if being laid off three months ago means that every day that goes by I worry about whether or not I'm unhireable for one reason or another.

"You're 25!" you say, not unreasonably, but then you go on. "You should be taking risks! You should be living! Move somewhere! Go out to bars!" But what am I supposed to do when I sign an 11-month lease assuming that I'll be here for another 11 months and then have everything fall apart in my hands, like when a child tries to pick up a sandcastle? Where's my trust fund buying me a new car so I can drive across the country like "living my best life?" Where's the fairy godmother (or godfather, I don't discriminate) making it so I can pursue my dreams instead of sadly accepting the status quo while still ranting about it?

I'm a pragmatist, so sue me, but I've always been one with a creative's soul, and that creative soul is drying up like the lakes of California. It turns out that that nothing lasts forever, you know?