Another weekend has begun. It’s the first week of May. I got maybe five hours of sleep last night because it was too hot in my apartment. For some reason, my fan stopped working, and my air conditioner is louder than a 747.

I think spring cleaning is in store, but I hate cleaning. You’re supposed to dust the home this month. It’s ritualistic I guess. The weather is only getting warmer here in Palm Springs. Eventually it will be over a hundred degrees in the desert. I’m not looking forward to that. I wish it was eighty degrees all year round.

But anyway, I just spoke with my editor yesterday, and she showed me the blueprint for publishing my first book. It’s an arduous process, and I’m not looking forward to it. I wish I could snap my fingers and have it done with, but that won’t work. I’ll have to do it the hard way, and that means marketing. The ‘M’ word. Yuck. Who likes marketing? Putting yourself out there, making yourself a brand. Why can’t I just be inconspicuous? This means people have to know me on Facebook and other social media websites and care about me.

I’m sitting in the coffee shop. A strange man is at the table next to me. It’s almost seven in the morning, and he’s drinking a bottled protein shake with a bottle of water. He wears a white baseball cap with silver hair beneath it, and he also wears a baby blue hooded sweatshirt. He keeps staring out the window pensively. His nose looks like that of a hawk. I can’t tell if he’s homeless. A lot of them come in here. I think the baristas give them free food and coffee. How else can they afford it? The coffee is too expensive. I spend about ten dollars every morning just to sit in here because I can’t just show up and not buy anything.

I have a tennis lesson today. I used to play competitively in college but have barely picked up a racquet since then, so my strokes are off. It’s an embarrassment. At the last lesson, I kept hitting balls into the next court. I wanted to hide somewhere from the coach and the people passing by. My rhythm is off, much like writing and where to put the words, et cetera. I hope that someday I can get it back.