Promises, Promises

I've had a bit of a shaky week. Maybe some of it was hormones, I don't know. I lacked my usual relaxed attitude, that feeling of centered calm that lets me greet the successes of my friends with compersive joy and accept their occasional offenses with equanimity.

Which is to say, I lost my temper. Quietly, privately, I raged. Being rather pathetically uncomfortable with anger, my default is to turn it against myself. Thankfully I've learned to stop myself from self-harming behaviors. (Well, unless you call scarfing large quantities of chocolate self harming. It's an okay choice, I think, relatively.) Instead I slept a lot, moped on friends' shoulders, and waited to feel better.

Of course, things that cause rage don't generally just go away on their own. They have to be looked at, and examined, and understood. They've got to be Addressed, and not while half asleep and sick on sugar overdose. I did a bit of journaling. I let myself vent. And I think I figured out the issue.

I haven't been writing. I haven't been working on any personal projects. I've poured energy into my job, BedPost Confessions, and being a mom. And then, tired out, I've collapsed on the couch. Every. Single. Night.

I don't watch much TV, but I read and tweet and surf and add things to my Amazon wishlist. I while away the evening until I'm too tired to get ready for bed, and then go to sleep miserably wishing I wouldn't have to get up in the morning. It's nothing out of the ordinary, I know. It just--finally--got to me.

I've got things to do. Books to write. Stories to tell. Filth to spread delicately on lily-white computer screens in patterns of perverted beauty. So. I'm recommitted. I will spend an hour a night on work that is mine only. And you, my beloved readers, will reap the benefit.

As a token of my sincerity, here is the first part of a story I've finally completed and which will be fully edited later this week.

The Composer

It was done - tonight's symphony. Tim looked up from his laptop with an anticipatory grin. It was true, composing was part of his day job, but he took satisfaction in his work. And there was a special savor to writing a piece for someone he knew personally.

Tonight's piece would test out his newest modifications to the machine. Over the last few weeks, he'd created a new sensation module and programmed it into his composing software. When he'd finally sat down to write today's symphony, he could feel the rightness of the new element. Today's composition would have a richer tone than any he'd written before.

He got up and stretched, then moved to the boxlike machine that took center stage in his office. There were just a few more adjustments to be made before he met Amity for dinner. He moved the seat down to fit her stature and rechecked the small screws that fastened the newest part of the apparatus. He'd already brought in clean towels. All that was left was to make sure the data had transferred and the symphony played smoothly. His laptop was already queued to begin playing in test mode as soon as he pressed the machine's power button. He'd chosen the round white button with a sense of irony: it had been made to ring a doorbell. In this case, ringing a doorbell was an entirely inadequate metaphor.

With an almost inaudible hydraulic sigh, the machine came to life. Tim opened the front access panel so he could more fully assess the movements of the components. Buzzes, whirs, clicks, and tiny puffs of air being released hinted at the music Tim heard in his mind. It would take the melodic moans and sighs and shrieks of Amity to truly bring it to life.

...to be continued...