Panic

"I hate to say this," said my attorney as we sat down at the Merry-Go-Round Bar on the second balcony, “but this place is getting to me. I think I'm getting the Fear." - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

At times, I have a tendency to overreact about things. This is one of those times.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo again this year, and already the fear is seeping in. Last year, I knew what I was going to write. I had page upon page of notes, outlines, plots and subplots. I had a direction, I had a compass. I knew where I was going. And I still didn't finish.

This year, I have no idea. I had an inkling that I would write a road novel, and then I realized I didn't know which way I wanted to point my car. The only direction that looked somewhat appealing turned out to be a dead end, and driving the same small patch of road for 50,000 words seemed redundant. But now I've already committed to the project, signed my name on the dotted line. I need an idea, and I need it fast.

Rosencrantz has also signed on for the project. (By the way, she's just started her own blog. Check it out. It's wild, it's weird, it's wonderful.) She already has a title, a plot, and an outline. Not that NaNoWriMo is a competition of any sort, but I'm already feeling like I'm left behind at the starting line with an engine that just won't turn over, and the race hasn't even started yet.

Perhaps inspiration will hit me unexpectedly like a bolt of lightning, but right now I feel like I'm walking around on a bright sunny day with a nine iron, praying for rain. Nothing. No electricity in the air yet.

I leave for my visit with Roger Mexico in a few days, but even that has me overly concerned. We pretty much played email tag all weekend, and I haven't heard from him since Saturday afternoon. He was headed to New York for the evening to go to the Legendary Pink Dots show (turns out he was able to get the night off after all), so I told him to have a good time and tell me all about the show when he got back. I'm sure he got back rather late that night, but my email inbox remained empty on Sunday and Monday. I dropped him another line this afternoon. Nothing. Nada.

(And no, GeekMan, I'm not ignoring you. I just don't have any finalized plans yet on when we'll be in town. I'm just waiting to hear....)

Now, I know what Roger Mexico's work schedule is like. I know that he's probably been incredibly busy making up work for taking off Saturday night. I'm sure that he'll drop me a line tomorrow afternoon at work telling me that the show was great, and he's been working eighteen hour days since then. He'll tell me I'm freaking out over nothing, and I should just chill the hell out. But that's not helping me at 2 in the morning, when I'm hopped up on coffee and news of snipers picking off random people. (Not that he's anywhere near the Maryland/DC area, but there are crazy people everywhere, not just in the suburbs of our nation's capitol.)

Zappagirl came over tonight, and we watched a trilogy of political comedies. We'd started Primary Colors a week or so ago, and finished it up tonight. We followed it up with Bob Roberts and Wag the Dog, both of which hit a little too close to home, given the impending mess our country is about to walk into in the Middle East. Too many references to the previous Gulf War and manipulative politics for one evening - I'm a little jumpy.

Did I mention there was coffee involved? Yeah, that's not helping matters any.

And now, for some ungodly reason, my computer has decided it doesn't want to work. It can't find Google, for crying out loud. It was working fine a few minutes ago, and now all I'm getting is "cannot find server" messages. Stupid dialup. (Thankfully I was bright enough to compose this somewhere other than Blogger; when I'll actually be able to connect to Blogger to post it is another story.)

I suppose I should look for the customer service number for my ISP. They seem to like to work on the servers in the Cincinnati area late at night, since they figure no one will be online. Yeah, no one but me. Thanks, guys. No really. Thanks. I enjoy sitting here in front of my computer, unable to use it for anything except playing solitaire and mah jongg.

Just checked the phone line. It seems to be in working order, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Hmmm. Hello? Tech support?

And after calling tech support, it seems the trouble is in my computer. Great.

(OK, it seems that restarting seemed to work, but does this mean I'll have to restart my computer fifty-seven times a night? Oh well. I suppose I'll try to get some sleep, and worry about my computer's little quirks in the morning.)

At least I’m not panicking anymore. Now I’m just pissed.