I’m unemployed. Everything I do each day is wasteful. The only productive thing I do on a daily basis is send out resumes that I’ll never hear from again like sending my imaginary children off to a really terrible war hoping that it is a just war and that they’ll forge a better life for us, but knowing deep down, that this is probably the last time I will ever see them. But, comparing resumes to children isn’t an apt comparison and I suppose all wars are terrible. I digress.

Writing a stupid answer to these stupid prompts every day is wasteful, but sometimes, and I do mean sometimes, they get me thinking. Sometimes, they spawn full-on creative efforts. Sometimes, I write a fictional short story set in its own little universe with its own little people that do things every day, unlike myself. Other times, I’m forced to dig deep into my cache of clichés or vocabulary words that start with the letter S. Today isn’t really one of those days.

Writing, and by extension, Plinky gives me something to do. Wake up, pee, make coffee, grab laptop, check to make sure none of my children came home from the war, write Plinky prompt. I know it’s unfair of me to write these prompts before I’ve even had my first cup of Joe for the day, but that’s usually the case. It is today anyhow.

Finding things to do that are not wasteful is a more appropriate activity these days than finding five minutes in a day to play blackjack on my smart phone (when I was employed, that was a favorite time waster). The problem is, I don’t really succeed. I try to kid myself into believing that the fact that I’m writing something every day is productive. Depending on how you look at it, it might be, but I haven’t worked on any of my own stories in a while and these Plinky answers, inspired though they may be, are hardly a writing legacy.

My life for the last month or two has consisted of long days that stretch into long nights with little sleep and little chance of productivity. I have become temporally unmoored. Purpose and I no longer see eye to eye. We had a falling out and neither of us is willing to make the first move towards apology. I am adrift in the vastness of temporal progression, just waiting for one of my children to come home in one piece instead of in a pine box.