The Chain

I open my laptop and a blank page glares back at me. I have been doing this for twenty-two days. I promised myself I would write every day for a month, because Jerry Seinfeld says I am supposed to write every single day. Jerry Seinfeld says my only job is to not break the chain. Jerry Seinfeld says I don’t have to write anything good.

And believe me… I haven’t.

I try some stream of consciousness because nothing will come to me that is creative or moving or beautiful. I am trying to write in very unbeautiful circumstances, today especially. The hotel room is not posh or cozy or even all that clean. The air conditioner buzzed and banged all night last night, and I couldn’t exactly turn it off, because I’m 40 now and I get hot at night - unless I am awake to pee, which I am quite a lot. But I promised Jerry Seinfeld I’d open the laptop and write, so here I am.

My watch vibrates to tell me I didn’t close all my rings yesterday. Ok, rude, I think, I probably won’t close them all today either. Business trips are hard on a health routine. There’s bursts of movement - between flights, between meetings. But there’s usually not time for an actual workout. And hotel gyms are generally lacking. Plus, thanks to Jerry, I am trying to make time for my writing. Every day. And that is a decidedly sedentary activity.

Sedentary and solitary. That’s a fun alliteration. I can’t think of anything to do with the wordplay.

The coffee in the in-room coffee maker is done. This is not going to be good coffee, but I have nothing to eat in the room until I go down to breakfast, and I am not going down to breakfast until I shower, and I can’t shower until I write for half an hour for Jerry Seinfeld.

Is Jerry Seinfeld problematic? I Google it. I am sure Googling things is allowed in my daily writing habit, because authors have to Google things all the time. We don’t know all the history or meaning of things, or which poisons will kill someone and not show up in autopsy. Ok, old Jer Bear has definitely said some things I don’t agree with. But his argument that writing every day is like working out a muscle is pretty brilliant.

Brilliant and annoying.

I get my coffee. It doesn’t suck as much as I thought, and I’m grateful for the hit of caffeine. It’s probably not my job, per se, to present the work today to our client, but I am the funniest and most engaging of the group sent on this mission, so I will be funny and engaging and try to win us some business.

I turn on a playlist called Focus Jazz. I have fallen in love with jazz recently, but I can’t tell anyone this because they would inevitably ask who my favorite jazz artist is, and I don’t know any jazz artists at all. But I do know that Spotify has playlists for all the different kinds of jazz - Focus Jazz, Evening Jazz, even Cozy Christmas Jazz. But a true fan of jazz music will likely not want to discuss the third song on Coffee Shop Jazz, even though I think it’s a smash hit.

It’s wild to me that music does help, and I’m able to write a few sentences about a woman in a coffee shop. This makes me feel creative and sophisticated, even though I am drinking terrible coffee from a paper cup in a Fairlight Inn on the side of a highway. And the air conditioner is banging again.

I turn up the jazz and try to decide if this woman in the coffee shop will do something unexpected, or if this story should be a comment on patriarchy, or if she’s going to fall in love. I guess it’s safe to say I haven’t really found my voice. I love writing all of those things, but none of it feels right at the moment. None of it feels true.

And even though Jerry Seinfeld says I don’t have to write anything good, I don’t want to write things that don’t feel true, at least. Maybe that’s too high minded and he would tell me to just write, to just work the muscle. Don’t be so precious about it. But the time I’m spending does feel precious, and every time I sit down, I want to write something that moves people.

That’s hard to do in only half an hour a day, Jerry.

The answer is more time, which I am lacking… like a Fairlight hotel gym.

Maybe the woman in the coffee shop is just a working mom trying to get it all done. Trying to be a good mom, and make bonus this year, and stay in shape, and not drink too much water after 7pm - but drink tons of water the rest of the day, and do self care, and keep friendships so she isn’t alone when her children go to college, and get in at least 8,000 steps a day, and make sure she uses her airline miles before they expire, and put the right granola bars on the shopping list, and remember to make a shopping list, and have sex with her husband twice a week, and make sure the dishwasher gets emptied, and read at least one book per month, and volunteer at school, and

Oops. I have written something true.

Damn it, Jerry.

I have four minutes before I need to get in the shower, and I want to keep going. This always happens to me. Maybe I need more than half an hour a day, but that is unimaginable. Add it to the list. I try to think of a name for my character. Names and story titles are always the worst for me. Gerri, I write, and laugh at myself. Myself, because in the writing world you only have yourself until the story is done. Solitary and sedentary.

My watch buzzes to remind me it’s time. I finish the crappy coffee, then stand and stretch, ready for a crappy shower. I will think about Gerri all day. That always happens, too. I’ll be on the lookout at the hotel coffee bar and in the Uber and on the plane for little things that might happen to Gerri. I wish I had more time for her, but I created her. I stretched the muscle.

I don’t have a paper calendar but I draw a big X in the fog on the bathroom mirror as the shower heats up. How do you like me now, Jerry?

How about you, Gerri?

I tell Siri to remind me we need paper towels at the house.

And the chain remains intact for another day.