I glanced at the clock to confirm that dusk had fallen. I did not need to look out of the window for validation.
With a start, I stare back again at the screen. And it stares right back at me and its annoyance at me. A single pulsing vertical line blinks at me, and it felt to me that it was pulsing a bit more aggressively, or was it my heart that seemed to be beating in time with that cursor?
With a roll of my wrists followed by a cracking of my knuckles, I set my palm on the keyboard and my fingers assume their starting positions on the keyboard, like sprinters in an Olympic final settling into their blocks.
I give myself a short pep talk, “Let’s get this started.”
And then I freeze… All those words that were roiling through my mind boiled away, all those strings of thoughts that sprung up shrank into nothingness, and emptiness settled in.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been staring at it for. It must have been just a moment or two…