yes that's all there is

Writing has been difficult the last few days. Usually when a thought comes into my head, I ache to push it out and document it as soon as possible. Lately, though, I've feeling kind of verbally constipated. I know something is there, waiting to be expressed, but the words just aren't manifesting themselves. It's a strange combination of feeling stuck in one place and yet not wanting to move an inch. I suppose that I don't know how to feel because I don't know what I want from the forseeable future.

Maybe it's that nothing terribly exciting has happened very recently. Funny how writing comes easier when one is getting lost in Italy or being dumped by someone she thought she could really be with. Event-based writing has never been an issue for me, but when the inertia of stability takes over I'm quite literally at a loss for words. Do you really want to hear about how I spent last night clipping my cat's nails and watching All About Eve? Or worse, about yet another night spent in the same bar I've been going to for three years drinking overpriced domestic beer and listening to prematurely bald men drone on about drafting floor statements?

Maybe it's August. Nothing like a heat index of 106 to render a girl completely useless. Walking home from work, I'm waiting for my brains to melt, pushing my iPod earbuds out with the force of their gray sludgy laziness. I've been trying to fight that laziness with other kinds of stimulation. I've been reading the trashy romance novels of other centuries, starting with Les Liaisons Dangereuses and working my way to The House of Mirth. They're both delicious and inspiring, but in this heat all I can get from them is a fervent gratitude that I am not required to wear a corset.

Maybe this weekend will jolt me out of it. There are goodbyes to be said, reunions to be celebrated, birthdays to toast, kayaks to be paddled, balls to kick and beer to drink. House of Mirth, indeed. Beyond that, there's much on the horizon-- my first graduate class, promotion at work, new relationships and actually enjoying the new home and roommate that I've scraped together in the last few months. I've never been good at settling and enjoying the moment. I've always been about anticipation and looking beyond, trying to see what's just around the corner. It's probably time to try and get over that... you reach a point where you've accumulated and discarded so much that it just becomes flaky. I don't want to be flaky.

Still, as I sit here at my computer at my pleasant job with nice co-workers, house and friends waiting for me when I leave, I can't help but hum to myself:

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends,
Then let's keep dancing...