If you are what you think…then I am an unemployed wannabe writer with a bleak panhandling career look forward to.

The world you make up in your head, and respond to, is More Real and has more Affect on your life than the factual one. Right?

Following this line of “reasoning,”I’m sad to report that I no longer a writer. No book coming out this summer. No big party. You see, this morning at Jim’s Restaurant (My local international world headquarters) I lost the little case in which I store my flash drives. Yep. All three manuscripts…somewhere out there amongst my friends, the coffee shop people.  Might as well have just emailed the manuscripts to a random guy on the internet who wanted to make a few bucks pirating stories. You are following?…I lost ALL my years of hard work in one quick swoop.

“I’m done,” I tell the spouse. “There’s no point in writing,” I continue, “if I’m too much of a mess to even keep up with my manuscripts.” “I can’t believe I’m such a loser–in more ways than one.”

The little mean replica in my head is saying, “You bet you screwed up. Your career is officially over!”

My spouse, daredevil that he is, tried to suggest that, just maybe, whoever found the drives  wouldn’t immediately open the content and think, “Wow! I’ve hit a gold mine! I’m going to publish these wonderful books and have all the benefits of a writer without a lick of work because I–being the luckiest person in the world–have stumbled across what is Obviously my personal winning lottery ticket!” This had to be said rather delicately.

I was in a tough spot. I either had to keep insisting that my words were unbelivale treasures which made me look grandiose or accept that maybe the finder wouldn’t immediately think dollar signs–which means my words aren’t the next Moby Dick. I settled for skipping that issue and claiming, either way, I’m too big an idiot to carry this author thing off.  Which he, of course, refuted…(But who can trust him? He said I’d look great in a string bikini.)…suggesting that just maybe–since my editors and publishers hadn’t burned what I’d written, I’d already proven myself as a writer…and, just maybe…someone else having a copy would amount to nothing since there are edited copies all over the states.

Fine. He didn’t get it…word theives were hanging around me all the time, mixing with the paparazi. I climbed in my car heading back to my base station. I didn’t allow myself to listen to comedy radio.

I found the flash drive dealie on my desk.  I wonder if I can get my job back?