2001-08-20~~9:26 a.m.
My heart and soul man...

I am terribly excited today. I got an e mail from someone I absolutely love who I have been out of touch with for quite some time. It was a short e mail as I am sure he didn't want to pour his heart and soul (oh, yes, he is the heart and soul pouring type) into an e mail he wasn't sure I'd get. He wanted to confirm that the address he had for me was still good.

It was.

Hooray!

Now I have to write back. This is the part I'm not so much good at.

In fact, I am a terrible correspondant. I mean well. Really. The problem is that I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist at times.

I want to sit down and compose the *perfect* e mail. In order for this to happen, several things must all be happening simultaniously. I must be undistracted, in a good mood, and have plenty of time to spare. These elements all come together about as often as the planets are in alignment.

So I end up putting off replying. Waiting for some miracle moment when all the right eloquent expressions rush my brain and my fingers begin to dance magically across the keyboard. I don't start to worry until a day or two has passed and I've done nothing yet.

That is the point where I begin to feel incredibly lame. Lame. Lame. Lame.

Too lame to write to people I want to correspond with. And the more time that passes without having responded, the greater the pressure to write something REALLY GOOD becomes.

Then I think, "You fool. If you had whipped out a quick reply on day one, you wouldn't be in this situation. But you didn't. And you CAN'T do that NOW... that window closed DAYS ago. Dummy."

Crap. I need to go write to Steve while that window is still open rather than going on and on about it here.

-Alice