My Blinking Friend

“Nothing last time, so something this time,” he thought to himself.

Everyone sooner or later falls out of the rhythm of their game, or job, or hobby. Life gets busy, work complicates things, and people still need to sleep. Though he relied more on coffee these days than a good night of sleep. Everyone knows that this isn’t good or healthy, and he still did it anyway.

“I bet this wouldn’t be as hard if I were sleeping right, maybe five hours of sleep a night isn’t good. Doable, but not good.”

Thank God for the standing desk that with the coffee kept him awake during the important hours of the day. Where the caffeine and sugar of his French Vanilla coffee concoctions failed, the near constant pull in the extension of his calf muscles succeeded. While he wouldn’t call his mind ‘sharp’ in those moments, he at least remained awake enough to hold a conversation with anyone who could’ve passed by his desk.

On his screen the small vertical line that indicated where his words would appear blinked steadily at him. Alone, and with nothing to show for its programmed regimented routine. He knew that his little cursor coworker always moved better with some friends. Though today, just like for the last while, he didn’t have any friends to introduce the blinking placeholder to. So they stared at one another, for a long time.

“Are we really doing this again?”

“What?”

“Are we really doing this again?” The little line repeated.

“Do you have a better idea?” He said, annoyed.

“You’re the idea guy, I’m just here to make sure you keep your place.”

“Well, then keep your, well you don’t have a mouth, but keep it shut.”

“I can’t keep shut what I don’t have. Plus I only say anything when you put the words in my nonexistent mouth.”

It had a point. The only time his little blinking coworker said anything was when he gave it something to spit out and push it across the white field of the screen.

“So if you’re saying something, that means I’m doing it. I’ve written something!” He realized with excitement.

“Have you?” It blinked back at him.

“What?”

“If all you’re doing is talking with me, have you really written anything?”

“Yes,” he said, annoyed. “Well, technically yes.”

“Is technically yes good enough for your editor?”

The small vertical cluster of pixels had a point, and that pissed him off even more. Couldn’t his small companion give him at least a small win, after weeks of them just staring at each other, silent, and without speaking.

“Are you upset with me?” He asked.

“What? No, why would I be?”

“You haven’t spoken to me in weeks.”

“We’ve established that’s your job, I just keep the place on the page.”

“Right, right, but then why haven’t you had anything to say recently?” He continued his line of questioning.

The blinking line blinked, for a good long moment. Nothing else to say. Just staring at him as he stared at his computer screen.

“You understand what you’re actually asking right?” The blinking line said.

“Yes, well, maybe. I guess I’m just looking for something else to blame for why I’ve been struggling recently. I get it, I’m the words guy, you’re the place on the page thing.”

“Exactly, so how about you stop talking to me and actually write something?”

“What? Do you not like talking to me? I’d thought after all these years working together you’d at least enjoy my company.” He said, clearly offended.

“Are you getting self conscious about a line of constantly blinking pixels on a computer screen not wanting to talk to you? I also see what you’re doing, talking to me to avoid doing what you should be doing right now.”

“Not constantly,” he replied.

“What?”

“You don’t constantly blink. You blink when nothing is being typed, and when things are being typed you hold on the screen constantly.”

“Oh for fu- I’m constantly blinking because you’re not writing. Kinda the issue we’re dealing with.” His small co-worker clearly annoyed with his obvious prolonging of an ill-productive conversation to avoid getting back to work.

“Well I just think we should be clear, I mean when we’re talking you’re not blinking, and that kind of solves the initial issue. Right?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” it said to him, “I mean what editor wants to read your conversation with a bunch of inanimate pixels?”

“Pixels are interesting, you’ve seen Wreck-It Ralph right? That movie even got a sequel.”

“I don’t have eyes.”

“Good point, well I’ll sum it up. It’s about a character in an arcade game call Ralph-”

“So instead of writing a new story you’re going to summarize another one tome, but really just yourself.”

Blinking.

More blinking.

The cursor blinked on and off for a full ten minutes.

“What am I supposed to write about?”

“Not this!”

“Why not?”

“Because no one wants to read a story about a writer who’s talking to a figment of his imagination brought on by sleep deprivation,” the cursor said.

“I mean there are weirder stories out there,” he said, confident in the bizarre tendencies of writers.

“If you’re going to start summarizing another story about some messed up person learning from experience that the sun is too bright to look at for more than a tenth of second, but they were happy they did because they had a moment of pure oneness within the natural world; tied up with an obvious metaphor about retinal damage relating to the marks of experience upon the human soul I’m going to force shut down your computer.”

“I think that was a run-on sentence,” he said as he looked over the story summary.

“Shouldn’t you know? You’re the writer.”

“Well, I’ve been talking to my word document’s cursor for the last thirty minutes. Let’s not claim I’m a good one.”

“Finally, something we can agree on,” the blinking line exclaimed.

Blinking.

Another long stretch of blinking.

“Rude,” he said, “you’ve never been this rude before.”

“You’ve never talked to me this long before.”

“Touché.”

“Are you going to write something now, that’s not this?”

“I’ll try.”

If a projected line of black pixels on a computer screen could sigh, it would have at that moment. Instead it just blinked.

He left the line blink in peace. His eyes went from it to the bookshelf next to his writing desk. The copies of his first three books stood in a spot of prominence, away from any other books on one of the shelves, and bookends held up the trio. His cursor didn’t need friends, words to keep it company as it ran across the page. The books on his shelf needed them.

The last email from his editor still remained unread in his inbox. Subject line: Suggestions for your follow up novel(I know you have writer's block)...(don’t try and lie to me dumbass). He left it unread for a month. How could he lie if he said nothing? He opened the email. As the subject line promised at the top of the body of text read bullet points of suggestions for what happened to different characters from his previous books. Interesting questions about things that had happened to them, and the implications of those events.

“These are really good suggestions,” he thought to himself.

He felt stupid for not opening the email sooner. His editor agreed since below the bullet point ideas read the sentence, “when you open this six weeks after I send it let me know what you’re going with.”

Well, only a month so he’s already surpassing expectations.

He opened up a new email reply and typed, “the second bullet point sounds interesting. I’ll work on that. Oh also, do you have any resources on sleeping aids?”

The email whizzed off back to his editor. He returned to his word document, his small friend stood there waiting, and blinking on and off.

They said nothing to each other, though he started to share a lot of words with it.