Massive thanks to my buddy for getting me moving on this.

I wonder if I'll make it to 30k words. My mind doesn't work the way it did when I was younger and able to think up coherent plots and interesting characters. Just last week, I spent a few hours making comments on a proposed workplace policy.

That's the caliber of work I'm used to putting out now.

On Saturday, I dropped my son off at a playground (with his yaya, of course) and, over a very good cup of coffee, I wrote the first part of the new story. 500+ words in 3 hours.

I rewrote it obsessively on Sunday. I'm now at 717 words and I'm still not happy.

Surprise, surprise. He messaged me the next day and he'd already written about 1700 words, the bastard.

I went into my archives and found the bones of a short story I'd plotted out a few years ago.

I took a couple of days to re-plot it, then I threw that out and started again.

We agreed that the important thing was to get something written, and it didn't matter if it was good or not. We also agreed on a lower target - 30k words - and I thought we'd both sink back into our regular messes and this would be another of those things we'd picked up once but never returned to.

One of the guys - let's call him Rand - replied, "Are you?" and then he messaged me directly and we talked about writing stuff again.

That led into a conversation about what's been going on with us. Like me, he's been facing a lot of challenges. Things I didn't know about.

Waiting for a new product announcement by the PSA: Certificate of No Record, or CENOREC.