I traded all my dreams away

I've been on hiatus, having had nothing to write about. 

Having had nothing to write about, I've been on hiatus. 

I'm not writing these days. I'm on a break. No dreams, no typey-typey.

I'm unsure of my own voice, except insomuch as it intones in my head in moments of frustration, egging on the anger like a gleefully antagonistic cheerleader. 

Vegetable on cutting board: I think I'll take a floor vacation. I hear it's nice this time of year.

Me: Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! 

<violently picks up a scrap of vegetable and rinses it in the sink>

Me (cont.): You thought you'd get away that easily? You are going into the pot, you intolerable piece of FUCK!

or

Casually playing Words with Friends (against the computer; my friends won't play with me), I stay in bed until 10AM, cursing the occasional loss, which occurs despite my employing a word unscrambler app and utilizing the numerous in-game hints and points boosting cheats. I don't like to lose. I am stubborn, so even though I really don't enjoy playing the game for hours, I am determined to clear the board of challengers before I get up.

"FFFFF-UCK!" I scream, pushing replay for the third time.

A sound of unease from behind the closed bedroom door gets ignored by me. It is the cats, undoubtedly hungry for their rations. Soon enough, I'll get up, I tell myself, so they can wait. I have to finish one thing before starting another. My inability to press the pause button on anything is another of my faults. Once I begin something, I'm like a dog with a bone. Don't even try to pry me away from it.

Today, I have a meeting at 5:30. That's about it. Nothing else on the agenda. 

 I've texted with Emery briefly, and likely that will occur again at some point in the course of the day. These texts are like the wild cards in my deck, and out of them, I can fashion myself into something that looks legitimate, almost like a real person with a life. 

I have a friend. She confides things to me, asks for my opinion and constantly tells me that I'm awesome or amazing, you know, those apex adjectives millennials use to express admiration or awe. I think she's top shelf, and I never pass up an opportunity to tell her. It's nice to be able to compliment someone without setting off their creep alarm.

Regarding my dreamless nights, well, I know the reason for them. It's the weed. Duh. I've been using it as a "sleeping aid." Sure, buddy, tell yourself that. It has nothing to do with that. It just happens that I do it at night, when I am supposed to be getting ready for bed. The effect is that I stay up longer, fiddling with my Ipad, doing childlike scribbles with a sketchpad app. The weed doesn't make me a better artist, but it does make me more receptive to the idea of playing around with an artistic medium. 

The weed also makes me more easily frustrated during the times when I'm not on it, which is most of the day. It is a very exacting toll taker, and there is an incremental tolerance that develops, requiring larger and more frequent doses to achieve the desired effect. Once I got off of the gold standard of  "only once a week and only on Saturday," I started down the reckless road of addiction. It's nasty, and I'm not enjoying it nearly as much, despite exponentially increasing my usage. 

FUCK! 

I'm going to have to start from scratch. Rebuild the framework of my critical thinking on the marshy swamp of my pot addled brain. See what's going on here? I'm using cheap phrases like "pot addled" in a desperate attempt to punch above my weight class. Like that last metaphor, and like a hundred others, I just pick things from the scrapbook of overused memes and sayings and offer them up like hash at a diner. This is Dollar General writing, not even Walmart quality fare. 

Let this be a cautionary tale: If you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall, tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar has given you the call. 

I'm just going to stop right here, not  because I have finished a thought or expressed it satisfactorily,  but because, well, just fuck it. I guess I just had to address the absent elephant that used to occupy the room upstairs.