Thursday, August 06, 2009

In Which Our Productivity Falters

The breaking news e-mail from CNN rolls in, dutifully announcing Sotomayor's confirmation. My officemate wonders if John McCain indeed voted no, and I spend about a minute Googling to no avail, hampered somewhat by a slow connection and more by the assumption that this is something we probably don't need the internet to confirm. It takes a while and I get no answers. Oh, I just wondered if you'd seen the roll call yet, she apologizes, I didn't mean to interrupt your work.

My work.

Heh.

I have been paralyzed for a long time now, days, at least, managing to drag a sentence here, a paragraph there out of my brain, distracted by something I can't quite catch a glimpse of except from the corner of my eye. It's an elusive ennui, sometimes taking the guise of anxiety over my son's looming adulthood and moving away, sometimes masquerading as an utter lack of confidence in my professional abilities, from time to time an aching shoulder, a sore knee, a dumpy visage in the mirror. It's all of these things and none of them. I am running uphill in sand, tethered by an elastic band that allows just enough progress to pique some hopeful interest before snapping the whole situation down to the bottom again.

I am supposed to be an expert of arcana. Vacation was supposed to rejevante me. I was supposed to be better than this. I hope my boss doesn't notice.

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