Smoky Sunday

He had a notebook in which he wrote down phrases he liked. It was an invaluable resource for a lazy mind. He wasn't a writer, but he wrote, and had written enough that he had even developed crutches to prop up a failing piece. The notebook was full of these: little poetry, combinations of words that he liked when first written down but sometimes not as much later, when he read over them. He liked being reminded of his own cleverness. Sometimes, he would misplace the notebook and uncountable words would be lost to him. Who picked them up? he wondered, and would have written down had not the notebook been missing. Phrases like that. He thought they added flair to his writing, made it stand out as above average. They must, because he had been saving each one for so long before he found the perfect place in a story for them. Who else put such forethought into their writing? he told himself. Only real writers, probably. He didn't aspire to be a writer, but wouldn't have minded if he someday found himself one. If he wrote only for his journals that would be okay too. The internet could make a writer of anyone. Not a good writer, or what would have been termed in the past simple "writer", but rather the more literal definition of "someone who writes." These are what the internet mostly made. He was one of these. But somewhat better, he thought, because he had stolen some of the habits of those who were real. He drank - not to excess, but enough that he could taste the melancholy of what it must be like if he did. He smoked, usually on Sundays when he didn't have work and thought he deserved a break from all the extra effort he had put into making Saturday equally but differently productive. He was smoking right now, though it wasn't a Sunday. He imagined that it was (a Sunday, that is). He had done this before, and wasn't concerned that "smoky sunday" would be lost because it was already written in the notebook. More than once; he sometimes forgot what he had already written. He continued smoking, like the previous day had been a Saturday (it hadn't) and productive (it had). He resolved to find his notebook before the day was over. The smoke he had been enjoying was extinguished in his Violet Beauregard, and he tried to figure out where he had left the stupid thing.