I had dreams last night, vivid ones, most likely as a result of a phone call coming in at the time that I probably should have woken up. I noticed that I tense up, trying to remember, trying to hang on to them until I get here to write them. That’s exactly not the point of all this. I shouldn’t be doing anything *for* this exercise, this exercise is supposed to be about what is. Everything else in my life, I have to build, I have to control.

All I have to do here is be here.

But yes, I did have dreams. How cliche, I was in highschool.

I was in a highschool – it wasn’t a school I had been to, but for some reason the feel of it felt like the actual middle school that I went to. I don’t think I was a student, I think I was actually a teacher, or some kind of TA (reminds me, I have some phone calls I have to make later).

I was in the art wing, outside of a classroom =, and the professor looked at me and another TA and asked up to come join in. I wanted to, but I had my period (I don’t know why I’m still embarrassed to talk about that) and wanted to go to the bathroom first and change out my sponge.

Ok… but I wasn’t wearing any shoes. So gross, walking into public bathrooms without shoes…

I paced around, wondering if I should go in, not go in, go in, not go in, and finally a girl walked up behind me. It was a girl that I knew from grade school… one of the popular girls, but she was always nice to me… she was adopting the neo-hippy aesthetic, and so was I.

She had always been barefoot in middle school, I kind of lost track of her after that, but she was very pretty.

She told me to go right in, but to wash my feet on the way out and it would be fine.

Everything would have been fine, except I washed my sponge in the sink (neatly) but forgot it on the side.

There was more, let’s see if I get to it.

This is so distracted and short – I skipped the cigarette that I have lately (lately? how long have I been doing this) been having when I first wake up and coffee is brewing. It feels wrong, I keep clicking away, I have opened my phone, my email, I considered bailing for arbitrary errands, and then simply just to have a smoke.

I just keep writing song tags.

However, as I said at the beginning, I am not doing anything *for* this exercise, it is here for *me*. I can see that morning cigarettes are not a good thing, if they’re increasing my dependency this much. I guess that makes this post somewhat valuable even if it does suck…

I just looked into my coffee cup and was disappointed that there was still coffee in there, actually disappointed. Which is awful because today, this is actually a good cup of coffee (yes I tried the needlessly bougie Starbucks Blonde, and yes, this is one of the only appropriate uses for the word bougie that I know of, don’t get me started on the false virtuosity of capitalism 2.0) and I should be relishing it rather than just hoping it will end so that I can go smoke.

This, truly the above, is what cigarettes do to people. The most damaging universal part, that happens every day, before lung cancer, or any of the serious things that seem so remote when you’re a teenager. It diminishes your enjoyment in things that are right in front of you, overshadowing them with anticipation of something that really, deep down you don’t even like all that much.

Or something like that, I’m not feeling all that eloquent right now.

My coffee is done.