Tired

He was tired. He needed a break. But like a swimmer half way across a vast body of water, there was no resting, no going back. Sink or swim. This was what you came to when you based your career on your own goddamned creativity. Creativity took energy. It took effort. Sure, he could just show up for work and do his job and get by for a while. A few months. Maybe a year. But how long could he do that and still be “the wonder kid”? Half of his brain told him that was all bullshit as it was. If he didn’t stay on the cutting, bleeding edge in his own time, pretty soon other people would start wondering what all the fuss was about too. He should have known way back when, when he was cranking out work left and right with boundless energy. It was fun. Fun as hell. But people kept asking him, “How do you keep that up every day???” Now he asked himself the same question. Back then, he didn’t have an answer. “I just do.” Now he didn’t have an answer again. But it was closer to, “I don’t.” OK, that wasn’t fair, even to himself. He still managed to pull something out of his ass fairly regularly. Something that inspired awe in others. That game him a bit of a chuckle. He pictured himself on stage at some Amsterdam red-light district live sex show. He reaches back, inserts his fist up his own ass and pulls out a live rabbit. The crowd oohs. Impressed applause. He just wondered how many damn rabbits he had left up there. Was he old? Burnt out? All dried up with nothing left inside? No, he thought. He was just tired. He just needed a break.