What condition my condition was in.

Black and I were talking last night and again today about how boredom and inaction can somehow manage to be, in its own way, exhausting. I'm feeling a funk right now, for instance. It's the sort of funk that seems to have settled on my shoulders, causing me to lower my head. My face has broken out, even, and I don't know why - but the very idea of changing out something as minor and pointless as the pillowcases bugs me. (Yeah, when I break out in the middle of the night - and you guys so don't want to read about skin irritations - I head for that heated foaming wash from Biore, and I change my pillowcases.)

I was supposed to work at the bookstore tonight - and I was told that I am not going to be working in the music department now that they have new staff to put back there because, though I'm a loyal, long-time employee, they find my focus on the department as a whole flawed - but I called out sick because I'm feeling light-headed, and I just need time to, I don't know, accomplish something other than the mundane tasks that surround me everyday, making me feel like I'm in a damn rut.

I've been taking my anti-depressant and my vitamins. I've been going out and being active whenever that's possible. So I don't know what it is.

Maybe it's that I know what I should be doing with my life, in terms of my writing and my focus and my talent, and I'm bummed that I am not doing it. (Of course, who can blame me - besides myself - for choosing to be practical and maintain my expense-paying jobs?)

"I know I'm a talented writer," I say to people who tell me that I need to write more, that I am good.

But writing that sentence makes me feel like a pompous jackass. I mean, it's luck and talent and drive. And if I only have one of those three things, then what good is this? I'm just another guy with a blog.

Take a week off, I think. Take six weeks off. Venture to Europe. Gain perspective. Write your masterwork while in relative isolation, and come back a new man. It works for people to do that, to break away from what's going on in everyday life. It's a risk, and you're capable of risks now. It's necessary. And it'll do you good.

I've fixed my Buford living situation, finally. And that feels great.

But what is it about solving one obstacle that then makes you feel like you can tackle all of them in one fell swoop?

It's not important that I write right now. It's merely important that I write. The ideas aren't going anywhere. They're simmering.

I need to go outside. The air in here is stifling.