It's hard to write anything when my fingers are this cold. It's supposed to be the coldest winter in 10 years so i'm half-lying half-sitting in my bed under the covers with the laptop keeping my legs warm. It doesnt help my fingers though. I tried putting my gloves on but that reduces my spelling skills to that of a well-trained shitsu walking across the keyboard. Oh well, I will just have to make do for as long as inspiration has struck me.

Inspiration.

It's always such a let-down. It's this bolt of lightning that hits you smack-bang in the middle of the brain and suddenly the world around you feels like it has taken a step towards you. It's like you've held down the control key and scrolled upwards with the mouse. There's this rush of blood to your head and along with it a sudden and infallible belief that you can do anything you set your mind to achieve.

You are absolutely amazing.

So then you pick that thing that you want to achieve, that thing that would be the most wonderfullest, amazingest thing in the whole world if it were just to happen. That thing that would give you the most wonderous and complete life that could be lived. A stepping-stone to a greater world even.

So you pick up that pen and start to plan, or you go out and buy that instrument, or you finally go into that garage, and it's all happening. You can feel the inspiration dripping off you, or is that perspiration because what you've set out to achieve it actually more difficult than you thought it would be a few hours ago. But you are still determined, the world is still shining out in size 16 arial font. So close and easy to understand. You keep going because all good things take a little effort and although you've been staring at the blank page for three hours now, or gotten calluses on your thumb and still don't know how to tune the guitar, or are still sitting in the middle of the garage, the one now-organised box sitting at your feet, the 30 disorganised boxes laying around you, the inspiration is still there.

But you can feel its presence waning.

What was once a think wollen coat wrapped around you keeping you centered and warm is now a silk shawl doing little to keep out the cold and dark feeling that you have been tricked. The bait and switch was pulled right under your nose and you didn't see it behind the boxes of junk around you. So now you're rocking backwards and forwards on your heels, your arms wrapped around your body. The silk shawl is lying on the ground in the garage next to your guitar and a pile of scrunched up paper.

The well of inspiration has dried up and besides feeling exactly how you did before you felt the calling, you now feel useless, pathetic and stuck. Good thing you didn't tell anyone of your big plans or you would also feel ashamed.

You've realised that you are not, nor will you ever be good enough to change your life in a dramatic meaningful way. Those people you see on the television are yes indeed, fictional people, and with your advantage of being 3-dimensional comes the disadvantage that you will live a meaningless mediocre existence.

Man, inspiration bites.