Monday, I put Episode Seven, the final installment of ON THE ICE, on the website. It felt good to get it done. The good feeling lasted approximately seventeen minutes.

Then an uninvited guest decided to park in my brain’s living room. She introduced herself as Marasme Da Funk, but I could call her Madame Funk. She made herself at home immediately, spreading out her considerable bulk and squonching me in a corner.

She managed to ooze around and monopolize most of the furnishings in my mind: the chair of thinking, the couch of emotions, the bookshelves of logic, and the potted plant trio of confidence, health, and creativity, which are still in their early growing stages and really didn’t need the interference. The lamp of future planning kept turning on and off each time Mme Funk bumped into it, creating the saddest strobe light ever. It put the whole room on edge.

I politely asked her to leave, but she paid no attention to my request. She began droning on and on about the Corrosiveness of Modern Technology on the public’s taste and the Pointlessness of New Works of Art amid the current overwhelming plentitude. Then she got personal and launched into a detailed dissection of my Lack of Writerly Bona Fides and my Failure to Attract a Large Audience.

I tried to ignore her. I took walks. Ate food. Read books. Watched British television miniseries episodes. Tried to reign in my overactive future planning lamp. But Madame Funk was unmoved. She bogarted the whole day. I went to bed with the brackish phlegm of despondence lodged in the back of my throat.

Fortunately, she cleared out in the night. The furnishings of my mind are still icky with the leftover residue of yesterday’s visit. It means I have a lot of clean up to do. I don’t mind the work. I’m just glad she’s gone.

But I don’t think I’ve seen the last of her.