Paranoid?

Who, me?

Just because when I finally was able to force myself to do some work yesterday and was roughly one-third done, a local power failure blew away some of what I was writing? Because when the juice came back on, my W.P. program was "auto-saving" my work in a file with a different name than I gave it, a mistake I then compounded by blindly hitting "save" every five minutes and then, when I was finally through hours later, saving the wrong file and losing the whole damn thing?

No, that probably wasn't the Universe throwing more dung-balls at me. More likely, it was simple brain-fade.

Or was it?

I find it difficult to concentrate these days. No doubt my general -- and specific -- miseries have a lot to do with that, but so does a feeling that, after 20 years of writing for a living, I have just about exhausted everything I have to say about my "specialty." That feeling isn't helped by the assignments I've been getting in recent months; without exception, I find them dull and repetitive.

That sort of thing doesn't bother some people. George Bush can repeat the same tired old pap over and over, can keep making the same disastrous decisions, and he seems to think that's fine. Likewise, his opposition can blame him for everything from the disaster in the Middle East to West Nile virus outbreaks, and never stop to think that all they are doing is making themselves sound whiny and foolish. The media can talk about the same worn-out subjects ad nauseum without ever realizing their audience just doesn't care.

In my own little niche, I'm sensitive to that stuff, though. If I had ever been able to devise a computer program I dreamed up -- one that would store all my old articles and, when I fed it the product name of the latest assignment and answered a few simple yes/no questions, it would spit out completed text in my "style" -- it would probably do a better job than I'm doing these days.

I could deal with it, I think, if I actually felt my efforts were leading to some worthwhile, even rewarding, purpose, a little personal (and shared) happiness in this unhappy world. In times past, I have found such a feeling to be a welcome tonic to restore my flagging energy.

Bah. I have to put out 4500 words of clean, interesting copy this week. But my mind wanders; I think about other things, as they are and as I'd like them to be. I feel like sleeping, walking, doing things that involve no mental effort at all.

It's true that the root of all this ennui and lack of motivation is likely to be right inside my head. If I ask 20 people about it, I'm sure 19 will say that's so.

But I'm not entirely sure the Universe hasn't singled me out for exceptionally rough handling. That seems to be happening to people who are much nicer, much more deserving of good things, than me.

So the paranoia remains.

And I don't like it.