Up at 0430.

Still very down. Rudderless. Uncertain. Lacking focus. Getting up in the morning and confronting the need to deal with a document, or project demand, creates goal, focus and direction. It exercises me, animates me. Gives me reason to feel I am whole, active, responsible, capable.

In the absence of that demand, I am just an old dude drooling with crayons. Incompetent. Uncertain. Confused. Lacking in skills and abilities. Forced into acceptance of an accident outcome that I refuse to accept.

And I realize as I write this that drooling with crayons is the outcome that I am furiously paddling against. I am like a man in a canoe proceeding downriver toward a great falls, or toward the dark circular pit of a whirlpool. I know without doubt that I am bound to be swept up by the forces of water and time and be propelled out over the edge, into a final plunge toward nowhere. Toward quiet annihilation and a boundless mist.

I know that is my future in the same way all humans know their ultimate future. What I rail against is not that future, but the immediate present. It is this sense of an uncomfortable present that animates me, that drives me to take up a paddle and fight my way across the surface like a deranged water spider, a mad man stroking the seas with a toothpick, doing all that he can to prove to himself that he can alter his course and proceed toward that final fall with a measure of human dignity and competence.