Tryin' to do right by you all night, Annette.

I can't write a damn thing these days. I sit down at my laptop, and nothing happens. Nothing at all. Blank page. When I try, I end up looking through the 2 million songs I've loaded on RealPlayer instead, and my attempt at writing instead becomes this game of finding the best background music for a round of arcade pinball.

I suck. I've been moping for weeks, reading short stories, studying other authors' writing styles and dealing with this stupid-ass breakup anxiety (though it's not like the relationship was that long, honestly). I thought I could maybe come up with a good story. But nothing's happened. I'm keeping my apartment tidy, and I'm trying to keep my finances in line.

Still, when I want to write, all I get is a blank page and frustration. I'm here at a friend's house now, and we're looking over my "portfolio" of essays - and I can't find any shit that I think would be worth a damn. No essays are here that work out of context.

When I was in my damn relationship, I didn't write. I thought it was because I was so occupied and *in love* that it was excusable, that writing would happen when it was supposed to.

Now I'm out of my relationship, and I've got loads of time. I'm still not writing.

I've had experiences I could draw from. My brother's Catholic wedding, held on the day the Pope died, was filled with tiny, ironic situations - like my mother and stepmother working together to get dressed or me catching the bridal garter.

With the breakup, you'd think I could write a nice murder story, something ridiculously angry and violent. (After reading Roald Dahl, I tried to visualize for a story what it would be like to beat my stepfather's head in with a hammer and leave him in the basement crawlspace at my mom's house. But there was no plot there, just anger.)

I was hoping for a nice, dark piece - something frustrated and sexual and angry.

The second wave of my writing class begins tomorrow, and I have nothing to show from this interim of weeks. I have nothing to bring to class tomorrow, and I really wanted to be able to show them something impressive.

Instead, this class might turn out like the last class, where I mostly showed them old essays and didn't produce anything new.

I'm writing this to change that. I'm writing this to write something.

The only damn thing I'm good at is talking about myself.