If you could start a new business right now, what would it be?
A woman is sitting in front of her computer, on the screen is the title of a play with Act One – Scene One centred below.
The woman is playing a silly game on her Tablet, five coffee cups beside her suggest she’s been sitting there a long time, but in fairness has achieved 5 words.
Suddenly a disembodied voice speaks.
“You’re playing those stupid games again!”
The woman freezes, she is terrified, she is alone.
“Wh…who is this?” She asks shakily.
“I am the voice of doom, I travel through the ether seeking procrastinating writers, trying to save them! Put the pointless object down!”
The woman is shaking so hard she can’t find the table in front of her to place the offending object on! She stutters…
“But I’m winning! Two more levels and I will have won!”
“And what will you win?”
Even more shakily “A place at the top of the leaderboard.”
It strikes her as faintly ridiculous even as she says it but she just has to win. She needs to win something. It’s not about money or prizes, it just makes the time she’s wasting feel less pointless.
In truth our woman is lost, she lost the muse, she lost the creative energy, she lost her fascination with writing. Now she tries but everything feels slightly off. Spark-less.
She’s sad, and scared, and pointless.
“You’ll never sell playing silly games as a play! You’ll need something dynamic that people can relate to, a rapidly spreading butt is an outcome but not one anyone would wish to admit to. You have to offer them more than that!”
The woman tries “What about squats with hand weights?”
There is a terrifying clatter and several loud crashes!
The woman looks up, roof still in place, windows in openings, cat sitting on the desk asleep and apparently oblivious. She summons a fraction of composure and asks:
“What was that?!” She grabs the cat and takes him under the desk with her, she clings to the cat for comfort. It stares at her then wriggles out of her grasp. Runs away. Now on top of everything she’s convinced the Voice of Doom is going to steal her cat! She’s broken.
The voice replies “Sorry I dropped my saucepans!”
“You’re the voice of doom and you have saucepans?”
“No, I’m the voice of your mother. We were doing a face time call on your phone, you excused yourself to visit the bathroom, and when you came back you forgot all about our call and went straight back to that stupid game. It’s destroying your mind and your creativity and your fitness!”
“It is so not doing that!”
“Seriously? I dropped round the other day and your eyes were so blurred from staring at the screen, when you opened the door you asked me who I was.”
“Oh…”
“You’ve got a butt like a sponge, your neck is frozen at an angle and you can’t look into my eyes without twisting your head up, you’re paler than my whitewash, and the other day when my doorbell dinged you ran to check messages on your phone!”
“I am not that bad!”
“You got lost coming back from the front door to the lounge because you’d been up playing games all night and couldn’t think straight.”
“I so could!”
“When you finally stumbled into the right room you looked at the sofa and asked me why you ever bought something so hideous. Thanks by the way. Now for goodness sake have a shower, get dressed, and charge your phone! You’ve left it on our call for three hours!”
Phone screen goes blank.
Back to the question
That’s partly why I’m not a playwright, and also a creative exaggeration of the irritation my stupid addiction to the phone is causing me. But you can only do so procrastinating before you have to do something to fill the space where the muse was.
I’m just bored witless with the something. If I lived somewhere like Seven Sisters Hazel I’d be as bad, put me in a Hammock and let me stare at the view. Which would at least mean an improvement for my eyesight!
Off to try and save my butt.
Have a good day
Put the tech down
Look towards the future
Best love
Amorah – Deb
