It starts with trepidation. It starts with, “can I do this?”
He wakes up, his heart heaving with anxious tension. “I can’t breathe”, he thinks, but he is indeed breathing, only that his body does not accept the release fresh oxygen usually provides. His attention then moves to his phone, filled with messages and reminders. Family messages. He rotates through them all… if he’s being honest with himself, he should respond to them. Instead, he turns off the phone, the screen suddenly a monolithic black. That’s for after. After he tries to write something.
Opening the laptop brings that same dark void to his attention - but one he can’t control. “Shit.” Pounding the space bar yields the same result as the ‘a’ key, the ‘s’ key, even holding the power key for a number of seconds. His chest is gripped into that same cycle of breathlessness. It’s a sign, a sign that it’s all a stupid plan that’ll never work. He’ll never be a writer. He struggled just to open his damn computer in the mornings! Just to write down a couple of sentences to practice! How was any of this ever supposed to work?
A white apple icon suddenly plasters the screen, followed by that reassuring “oooommmm” sound. The sound that things are working. The sound that says, at least, you can try today.