I am tired. Bone-weary, I sit and stare at the computer screen. My fingers move sluggishly across the keyboard in a slow dance. Words flow like treacle.

But my brain, it jumps and capers, jibbers and howls. It keeps focusing on other things to write, on other ideas. I corral it into shape but soon it flitters away to focus on something new. I have ideas. So many that flow past like leaves upon a river’s rapids. Some are pulled, sodden and messy, from the water. Others are allowed to float past.

Each is soon put back into the water as interest wanes.

This state of mind is not good. It is not productive. And yet…

And yet it persists.

I know why it is here. I am caught in the midst of a great personal undertaking. But I would rather, in my selfishness and naivety, that it were not so. My mind longs for the heady pleasure of creative writing. Even that is corrupted. Riven by guilt. Riven by doubt. Riven and gnawed through by notions of duty.

I try to save creative writing as the reward for work accomplished but my mind tries to drive me in this direction regardless. Even then, even still, it will not focus on these new ideas. Self-questioning, self-doubt, these worms have dug deep. Each new idea seems cliché or trite. What is the purpose? What is the relevance? Where is the deeper meaning? These questions pierce even the greatest armour.

My mind longs for a time without questions of relevance, of purpose. Why? Why? Why? The same questions over and over again.

I am dogged by this refrain. I come to peace with it, give it answers. For a time it is pacified, but then it comes shuffling back, resurrected by my subconscious.

For the moment the questions are silent, but the restlessness remains.

One hundred words before reward. This is all that remains.

Those one hundred words seem like one hundred miles of waterless wastes to my thirst-addled mind.