Over the past few weeks, while digging deep into USFL research and writing, I’ve been pretty lonely.
It comes with the process. You’re alone, with a pile of notes and your thoughts, anxious and sort of depressed, hoping everything works out while wondering whether everything will work out. You talk to the walls, you spend far too much on bullshit coffee and bullshit snacks, your neck is sore and your fingers and tired and you’re always looking for an outlet.
I digress.
Last night I started scanning the site meetup.com, seeking writing companionship. I’m not entirely sure why, because you can’t really get writing done and simultaneously have companions. But, well, yeah.
Anyhow, I found a group of writers meeting this morning, at a coffee shop named Bodhi Leaf in Orange, Cal. So I signed up and agreed to come.
I am here.
The writing group is at an adjacent table. There are three people, and they all look very nice. A woman in, oh, her mid-50s, a woman in her 20s with dyed red hair and a guy, also in his 20s, with a blue sweatshirt and something of a goatee. Again, they all look very nice. But I … can’t … pull … the … trigger. It actually reminds me of being in my 20s and, one time in Nashville, showing up for an arranged date—then bolting. There was a pressure of forced introduction that made me uncomfortable.
I’m literally seven feet away from these people. I actually heard the man say to the young woman, “Anyone else coming?” She replied, “One more.” Because I’m a fucking lunatic, I rushed to my little self-created meetup profile page, created a new image, fucked with the bio and changed it thusly …
Which leads to the question: What’s weirder …
A. That I’m staring at the members of a Meet Up I agreed to attend?
B. That I changed my profile photo to avoid it getting awkward?
