-- Friday, March 24, 2000 --

12:47 a.m. I felt a strange letdown today, but it doesn't surprise me. This always happens to me after a period of intense activity. During the height of the turmoil and the chaos, I long to have my life back to normal ... but when I get it back to normal, I feel ...

... jumpy? anxious? nervous? insecure?

Nothing really important to do ... no sense of accomplishment, no matter how many small tasks I complete ... a vague feeling that I'm somehow in trouble ... a free-floating intimation of doom ... and an annoying sense of my own imminent mortality ...

Do I really need a huge task to anchor me?

Could this mean ... that I'm a ... a ... workaholic?

I can safely say that I have never, in my entire life, felt entirely safe. I always look over my shoulder. It's probably that damn atomic bomb training we endured in grade school. The idea of total global annihilation really sticks in your craw, I tell you.

You can lose yourself in a big project and you can trade your own puny concerns for the bigger demands of The Thing itself. There will be a set schedule -- no need to worry about your own foggy future. The Thing has a reality that's solid and unshakable, a big old concrete mixing truck rolling across the soft muck of your messy life.

You grind out the hours and you forget all your troubles and if you're lucky, you even forget yourself in the whirlwind of activity.

Oh, how pleasant it is to lose your shaky self, to anchor its wobbly legs in the gritty concrete lava flow of hard labor, if only for a few hours.

This day is too loose around me. But fear not -- tomorrow, a new routine will save the day. And so will the city equivalent of yard work. I'm going to sweep up the sidewalk in front of our house and trim some of the clingy vines that are growing on our wall.

I'm going to say hello to passersby and their dogs. I'm going to get some sun on my face and maybe I'll even wander to a yard sale or two. Routine. The quieter pace of a Saturday should soothe my ruffled fur and drive out all the demand demons and nits. Or drive me mad.

Whichever is closer.