Um, hi. Hi? Not at work.

I got up, showered, dressed. Then I could not get myself out the door. This is feeling like a problem.

I know the only solution is to just do it. Just go to work. Just go to fucking class. Don't give in to the breakdown battering at the door.

I am teaching a workshop in two hours. I feel positively ill at the thought. Positively green. What is this? This absolute immobility. Impotence. Free-floating anxiety as Bathsheba calls it. I miss having her about. We used to analyze and compare and deconstruct all the vagaries and subtle manifestations of the aforementioned FFA for hours. I miss having her around for other reasons too, but I must mention each little reason as it returns because, damn it all, I miss her.

Ugh. So many cigarettes. So little to show for it. Poor old Bash is paying the price for being adopted by an anxiety-addled, existentially-marred, socially-paranoid Freak of Humanity. Sigh. I'm normally much better at posing as a functioning adult. Hopefully I'll become a little more ok as the day progresses. God knows I have to. God knows I will soon be confronted with a class full of aspiring poets and I will have to make noises as if I had a bloody clue about this. Or anything. Like how people form cogent thoughts or brush their teeth or get dressed and out the door every bloody day of their whole lives. How do they? How do you?

I'm freezing. Also. I'm no fan of the chill. I forgot that I do not enjoy being cold. And it's like 70 degrees out so I should not be cold, but I am. Shaking in my boots cold. Damnation.

Two steps forward, 10 steps back.