The Third Person

She sat alone in the dark, hands folded in front of her staring off into space, contemplating the next move. Today had pretty much been a wash at work, the question was if it was worth salvaging. This would make two wasted days in a row...Yesterday had played like a bad country song so she had been looking forward to starting over today.

It had begun promising enough, she had realized halfway through her first cuppa that she wasn't going to be late as the gallery was opening at noon this week instead of eleven. That was about the only thing that had gone right today. Arriving at work landed her in the middle of a storm that had brewed over the weekend. One of the artists had called it quites and there had been a hurricane of activity trying to fill the hole they left. Being the first one back left her to deal with the raw ends of things, people wanted answers, they wanted to know what was going on. Unfortunately, the people who wanted these things were the ones who were supposed to know in the first place and no one wanted to step up and wing it. Today had been spent diverting calls and e-mails, her had spent her time at work trying to not do things that were not her job. This had left little actual time for the things that were.

The stress of the day had left her craving junk food and she had stopped for a burger and fries on the way home. She knew it was stress eating, but after dodging bullets all day she didn't have the stamina left to tell herself no. The guy behind the counter must have been having a better day. He had snuck an extra meat patty on her bun, a nice gesture but she probably shouldn't have eaten it. The burger sat in her stomach like some sort of malevolent stone, she was going to regret it tomorrow. She was regretting it right now.

Shifting in her seat, the springs creaked and she slowly sipped what was left of her sugar-free caffeine-free why-bother soda. She knew she needed to move, to do something. Action begets action. She had been stopped for too long. Stopped writing, stopped image making, stopped cleaning, stopped going out. All this stopping had left her doing nothing. Nothing but sitting in the dark wondering what she should do.

If she could just do one thing, one thing that would get everything else going again. The straw in the soda sounded like a distressed gosling as she absentmindedly sucked up the last of the liquid. She reached for her laptop and punched the button to turn it on. The button made a satisfying snapping sound, like popping a particularly good chewing gum bubble with your tongue, and the cheery cord greeted her as her hard-drive whined into life.

She opened up the page to her blog and started typing. Maybe today wasn't a total wash after all.