When someone asks you if you would prefer to know little about a lot or a lot about a little, I always answer with the former. I narrow path of knowledge is the kind of thing that makes people close-minded and ignorant. I believe in getting out to see the world, or your own world, at least, and exploring everything within your grasp. Too many people pass up good opportunities. The problem with that is exactly what it states: I know little about a lot. I can do a sum of things, but I’m not particularly good at anything.

Take now for instance. ‘I want to write something,’ I said. ‘Then do it,’ they said, ‘Write.’ Talking is very easy. Lots of people do it. Just that, though. No doing- just talking. So I sit in front at my computer desk staring at a blank-paged document with wide, blue margins and that obnoxious blinking line. I hate that blinking line. What I hate more is the way the tear-jerking, dramatic, awesome stories in my head refuse to pack up and move to a new address. So, they stay lodged up in there, poking at me and laughing, for sure, because I can’t seem to pin them down and get them on the screen as I stare at it. Damn them. Every one of them.

The worst part is that I’m trying. I could be doing the innumerable other things that I know a little about: candle-making, beading jewelry, knitting, cooking, playing bass guitar, singing, drawing, reading, et cetera. It would be so easy to just hit ‘Start’ and open a web browser window- check my email then get on facebook for an unhealthy couple of hours. I don’t do any of these things, though. I try. I look in my brain and see those eviction notices and those stories up in there with their doors locked, laughing, while I stare at that stupid blinking line and that obnoxious, wide, blue margin.

Finally, I realize that I’m not trying nearly as hard as I thought because I’m really just staring off into space, using the blinking line as an alibi as my mind wonders into nothingness. I could go on thinking about nothing, letting the tight, stressed ball of my Self loose to wander the nearby area for quite awhile. It’s vindicating to let go for once, but when I sigh it brings me back the realization that I’m supposed to be trying, and it isn’t working out for me very well. Shit.

Well, maybe I need some music, I rationalize. So, I minimize the blank-paged document to click on the iTunes icon on my desktop. I always had trouble with that icon. I go through my tried-true process of double-click, pause, click off to the side, then click once again. After another couple of moments of waiting, the window finally comes up and I choose a good playlist. Satisfied, I open the other window again, and, you guessed it, stare. The music doesn’t help like I’d hoped; I just get caught up in singing with the music, or playing the air-drums to actually focus on any story-writing.

Finally, I decide that enough is e-fucking-nough. I sit my Self down, look it in the eye and say ‘Straighten up, you hear? I’ve got shit to do besides stare at a blank screen all day! Get your ass in gear and bloody think of something!’ Apparently, I’ve got a bit of a British accent from somewhere. My Self grudgingly harrumphs back into place, chugging its proverbially spinach and working its way up to the house to kick the ass out of the story I created so I can get it the hell out.

My Self drags that story kicking and screaming to the front of my mind until I can clearly see it. The music sets a mood for the story as, finally, a witty, or at least ‘good enough’ first line comes to me. I grasp on to it like a lifeline while I work through the final kinks, remembering that one word that starts with an ‘a’ and is like that one word, but I can’t remember either one or what it means, directly, but it’s the perfect word, or wouldn’t these words sound better together? And then, suddenly, my fingers start to twitch across the keyboard, surprising even me as they actually hit the right keys because they’re moving so fast, but that only works then they do move fast because if I slow it down to do it right then I’m fucked to hell, and they get stiff and hit ‘w’ instead of ‘n’ for no reason.

I’m off to a good start with that first line because then I can’t stop. The music fades to the background, even I fade to the background. Nothing is happening and reality is gone because that story I evicted decided that it suddenly likes the place I’m working it into, and it won’t leave me alone until it’s all on the four, going on twelve, going on twenty-six,-paged document. I’m on a roll and so proud My Self is swelling with a big grin. Everything flows, except for that, which I change when I read through and then keep going. It’s all great!

And then it happens. It always does. My cell phone rings right beside the keyboard, except I forgot it was there, and it startles me a bit when a Transformers tone blasts from it.

“Hello?”

“Hey! What’s up? We decided to have practice! We’re at WalMart, so it should take us, like, fifteen minutes to get there! Are you up to it?” I sigh heavily. I could say ‘no,’ and they would understand, but that flow is gone, and I don’t have the willpower to send my Self back into the recesses of my mind just to find it again. I might as well just give up now.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be there in twenty. Don’t start without me!”

“No promises!” They exclaim with a laugh before hanging up the phone. I shake my head with a chuckle of my own as my phone slides closed. I go to save the document, but I don’t really have a title yet, so it just gets saved as the first few words of the document, just like the twelve or so others that are already saved in that folder. I close both windows, put clothes besides pajamas on, grab my coat and shoes, then my bass, and head out the door.

It was worth a shot, anyways.