The Voice of my Muse

I was in a foul mood today. As I am most days. I got in the car and headed to my friend Jeff's house, upset about work, upset about my social life, upset about my computer being so damn slow it nearly causes me to curl into fetal position.

I always have an audio book loaded on the CD player in my car, for when I drive to Big's or to Jeff's, but most of the time, I just want to listen to the radio, sing along to some song that I love, and let someone more musically talented than me lift my spirits.

But today, there was no fixing my mood. I grabbed my mp3 player and shouted bitter, defeated words into it as I sometimes use it as a little audio journal. And that didn't really help much either, except to put into words exactly how I was feeling.

But then I wondered what the very first audio journal entry I had on there was. So I turned it on and listened to myself talk, a me from the past, recording a message for the future. It was the first week of October, and I needed to come up with a scary story for my annual contest with myself. I had no ideas, so I brainstormed for a few minutes, coming up with scenarios of "wouldn't it be scary if . . ." or "I'd like to write a story where . . ." and the like.

And then, I seemed to have hit on something. "No, wait. I've got it," I said, and began to talk through a short story. I meandered and backtracked and changed my mind and rephrased, but I went from beginning to end on the story, even spelling out what the last sentence would be, and man, this was pretty good, inspired work.

And what was strange was, I had absolutely no memory of recording this. I didn't know where the story was going to go, and I couldn't remember coming up with it, and I certainly never wrote it down (not for that particular OSSE or ever), but because it was me thinking it up, it was totally down my alley and to my own personal taste. It was as if I had stumbled upon a story that was written specifically for me, by somebody who knew exactly what I'd like.

And wow, did it brighten my mood. If I had been going home instead of to Jeff's, I'd have gotten on the old, slower-than-melting-glaciers computer, and written it up.

The funny thing is, I never listen to those old audio journals. They just sit on my mp3 players until the memory gets wiped, or I transfer them onto my computer hard drive, where they are promptly forgotten. I have fifty or more of them, and who knows how many story synopses or plot threads might be on there, just waiting for somebody to discover them?

There's a hopeful thought. Thanks, me.

Rish "The Schizo" Outfield