Today was a good day because I didn’t have to go into the office and instead I stayed home and watched a couple movies off the List, The Birds and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and I wrote an essay and read a long piece of non-fiction and submitted two more queries for Horny Nuns and posted three different essays to the website, made dinner, sent an important email and tended the dogs.

            Busy busy.

            More to the point: I just paid rent and now I’m pinching pennies until next week’s paycheck, so I spent just $3 today on some Cuban toast and a colada. Took small sips of that colada for five hours while working nonstop.

            Efficient.

            Also: I cleared off my desk at the apartment and worked from here all day! Didn’t go out and splurge on coffee or snacks or anything. Didn’t waste an hour walking to and from the café where I might have normally done all this work.

            Very good.

            So then…so then why this malaise?

            It’s 10 p.m. on Tuesday and I’m tired, been up since 6, so I’ll probably turn in pretty soon. But I’m here at my desk for like the tenth hour today and my head keeps darting to embarrassing shit that I did years ago. I’m lamenting that I haven’t seen or heard from this person, that person, I’m thinking of my future in a bleak kinda way and checking my email obsessively in hopes that one of these agents mighta gotten back to me all hosannas about Horny Nuns and “yes I said yes I will Yes.”

            Granted, I’m telling you all this from the halfway point of my second cuppa wine, but I’ve been heading in this direction since about 4 p.m. Just felt my sunny disposition kinda tip.

            What I was thinking is that maybe, this having been a particularly solitary and productive day (one spent at my bedroom desk, no less), is that this would’ve been an ideal night for happy hour. Two pints with Bob and Lynda or even just a chatty bar tender or a book. Talk shit, get tipsy, walk home and watch a cartoon and go to sleep.

            So what I’m telling myself is, “OK, that’s what I needed, is a coupla pints with familiar faces, and now my headspace is a little bit skewed cuz I didn’t get it. No biggie.”

            But that’s bad. Right? That my evening’s disposition should be contingent on whether I got to drink booze in public tonight?           

            If I’ve got booze at home, though, and I’m not all that interested in it, then maybe it’s just the bar I’m itching for. The Pavlovian call-and-response of being handed that first drink and taking that first foamy sip and knowing, down in my bones, that the day is done. It triggers relaxation, I guess.

            Ahdunno.

            Anyway, listen, it’s getting late, I’m tipsy, got a busy day ahead of me. Think I’ll just finish this drink and head out. Wanna get the bill, I’ll Venmo you…?