I just turned in my homework more than a couple hours late, and I’d been working on it, I really had, but then I went to sleep.

I’ve been flitting around lately like a butterfly with ADHD, landing on one flower, and then the next, and then that picture of a flower, and then that weird red thing (it’s a lighter) in the backyard, and then dying, every night.

My kid always wanted a pet butterfly. We got her one of those caterpillar kits, where you have this tiny plastic container full of food and caterpillars, and ideally they form little crysalises on top, and ideally you move them into the larger container then and then they ideally hatch out into butterflies, and ideally don’t die before you set them free.

I’m very worried we’re going to fuck it up for her.

I haven’t been writing. I’ve been writing every day. Jetpak congratulates me on my 12 day streak with The Works Free, but when faced with any of my old projects I freeze and dawdle and then open facebook. I can respond to a question about cats or dogs, which do I prefer? I can write something even semi-poignant about comfort food. I have no less than four novels at once, right now. Here they are:

1. Pip’s Ophidian
2. Jitterbuggin
3. 5th: a Drunk’s Memoir
4. Pink Milk

Pink Milk is essentially done. The memoir will never be done. Jitterbuggin I wrote the first chapter years ago and am now staring at it every now and then, trying to will myself to continue because the first chapter slaps. Then there’s Pip.

Pip’s Ophidian is, without a doubt, the one I most want to write. It’s also the one I stand frozen at the precipice of. It’s long. It’s multiple books. It’s exactly the story I’ve been dreaming of. Why can’t I write it?

Why can’t I write schoolwork in a timely manner? Will I be too fat to fit in my wedding dress come September? Why is it that every time I do one thing, I should be doing another? Why do I not want to go to meetings anymore? Am I about to relapse? I don’t feel like I am, but who knows. I am always in possession of that gun, and I don’t even really understand when it’s loaded and the safety’s off.

When will submittable stop telling me half my shit is ‘in progress’ and let me know when it’s trashed?