Are you peeking at me?

It seems that I lost my keys somewhere. I had left them under my pillow last night next to the notepad that I write in whenever the floodgates inside my mind burst open around 4 a.m. I would usually reach under the pillow, groggily grab the keys, and switch off that annoying voice behind my eyes which is telling me that the idea of two geese waddling into a bar carrying a scroll lined with multicolored numbers is a very good topic to write about. With a twist of my wrist and a roll of mental duct tape, I would silence the voice, drag it back into that dark closet which holds every embarrassing moment of my life (I don’t remember doing THAT while drunk), and admonish my slacker guard who was suppose to keep such thoughts from interrupting my usual five hours of sleep.

But I couldn’t find my keys last night.

So here I am, trying to concentrate enough to work on other projects, and the voice inside my head won’t shut up!

Let’s write about the time when you were a kid and your friends invited you to go fishing, the voice suggests. You remember, it was the time when we snuck onto the neighbor’s property and sat alongside the pond that they had stocked with exotic fish. And when the adults spotted us out there, we dropped all of our gear and went running, but Tina smacked right into the barbed wire fence that she forgot about at the edge of the woods.

"Hush! I’m working," I grumble at the voice, only to look at the computer screen and notice that I’ve already halfway typed in the story.

Okay, then. Thinking that far back might be too hard for you right now, the voice carps. Why don’t we write about that wedding you went to this year? The one where the guests had to take turns driving down to the local convenience store to buy soda pop for the kids because the bride was too cheap to offer anything to drink at the reception?

"Not right now. Can’t you see that I’m busy?" I lift my hands and hold my head, not wanting to reminisce on that disaster.

The voice gets quiet for a moment, then lowers its tone whenever heavy work is involved. Fine. Why don’t we make up a story? How about this: After making final arrangements with the funeral director, a woman begins cleaning out her mother’s old armoire and finds mail with her name on it. She uncovers the truth that her mother had been swimming in debt before she died and had stolen her daughter’s identity to handle all the creditors. Unfortunately, her mother failed to ever inform the daughter about it or repay any of the interest on the credit cards, and the woman is now getting strange phone calls from a man claiming to be her husband.

My fingers hover over the keyboard. The voice has my attention now. "Then what happens?"

Isn’t it obvious? The voice puffs out an invisible chest, proud that the idea got me intrigued. The distraught daughter turns from the armoire as two geese waddle in holding a scroll lined with multicolored numbers . . .

"AUGHH!" I look for the nearest pen to ram into my ear at the voice only to realize that doing this will make me very uncomfortable inside and wake up my slacker guard who will start getting on my case too.

If only I could find my keys. But I haven’t, and I need to do something to keep the voice entertained for now. Then the lamp on the desk flickers as a bright idea flashes at me while surfing the Internet.

Why not create a Blog?

I could jot down those distracting thoughts, get them out my head, so I can work on more worthwhile tasks. I’ll open that dark closet and release all those surreal events from my life: those childhood stories from my misspent youth, the adventurous tales while working in the wedding biz, and the dream fodder that won’t fit on the notepad under my pillow. I’ll be happy, the voice inside me will be happy, and the slacker guard can get the pink slip.

But why do I get the feeling that someone else might be reading this?