Friday morning: I had blocked out 3 hours on my calendar to write, so drove downtown, found a rare parking spot in front of Grounds for Coffee, ordered a 16-ounce latte, perched at the bar upstairs, opened my laptop, logged into my Catapult account, read through the Introduction to the Generating New Ideas for the Personal Essay online independent study class with Lilly Dancyger, created a list of experiences & identities that define me, moved to Exercise #1: Your Unique Perspective, tried to generate interesting pairs from the previous list, and realized I had nothing unique to share. My life is boring. Then I realized I’d had too much coffee: 2 cups at home and 2 shots of espresso at the coffee shop. Now what? Jittery, agitated–why hadn’t I paced myself?–impatient for inspiration. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS ANYMORE! So I check email, download some files, organize folders, write on my blog. Sigh.