Where did it go?

I'm finished... exhausted. I feel like something has been torn out of me and stuck onto paper. When I was rereading the final draft I kept thinking, 'surely I didn't write that,' although that's quite fitting with the topic that I have been studying. In any case, I'm finished... and I think I miss it. Or maybe its something else, but something's definately missing. What the hell am I supposed to do now? Get a job, work until September. It all seems like such an anti-climax. I was expecting waves of relief, tears of joy... instead I blinked for a while.

In an effort to recover some of the exhuberance that I felt while mulling over various concepts I listened to Beethoven's 9th which always makes me want to have a dance. But that didn't linger for long and now I'm sat at my computer again. I should go to bed and get some sleep, I've got to go get this printed and bound tomorrow. But tearing myself from my computer seems like an impossibility. I've sat here for so long, become so accustomed to looking at this screen, sitting in this chair, the feel of the keyboard beneath my fingers.

What a fucking joke... I should be celebrating, getting drunk, or at least relaxing. Instead I did what I always do... reorganise my philosophy books as they get in such a mess after I use them. I have a certain order for them and I like to spend alot of time getting them in the right place and making sure they look good.

Is this it? Every time I put everything I have into a piece of work am I just going to be left with something missing? I wonder if that's how authors feel when they are published, or musicians, artists, anyone who creates. Every time they create something and finally have to say 'Well, that's it, there it is. I have to stop now,' do they sever it from themselves, give it over to someone else and in turn find that piece of themselves gone? I don't know.

I think that I'll have to do what I always do in such situations, wallow in the feeling of emptiness for a while, let it wash over me. Sit in the bath with a glass of wine and stare blankly, no thoughts, no words, just nothing.

I'll have to be right again by the weekend though. I have a paper to give on Saturday and the parties are starting. After my months of solitude I'm expected back on the social 'scene' and to be my usual flamboyant self. People, seeing people again, man... what am I going to say to them? I don't have anything to say beyond philosophical gibberish which I am loath to talk about in public. I need some nonsense, some glue, although maybe it won't be so hard after half a bottle of whiskey.

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