I accidentally woke up my brain troll,
Huey.

It all started last week when I went and got
a brand new set of goals.
They were fresh and new
and I washed them clean
and I stacked them up, and arranged them in an
aesthetically pleasing manner.
They were sensible, practical goals,
sturdy and well made.  Not those
see through porcelain goals I’ve had before,
easily broken, easily left unused
because of their delicacy.

And then,
I noticed a very
tiny
crack
in one of my goals.

And that teeny tiny crack made a noise loud enough
to wake up
Huey.

He lumbered in to my brain
knocking open the cupboards with his meaty hands,
casually wearing fuzzy bunny slippers
and a daisy print bathrobe,
dropping the ashes of his morning cigar on my floor
brewing a big cup of  insecurity, indecision,
disorganization and doubt.
His favorite.

On days when Huey shows up
when he’s knocked down and broken a whole shelf
of my clean, neatly arranged expectations
all I want to do is stay inside
call in sick
ingnore the world
and say
“No,
sorry,
I can’t help you today
I’ve got a brain troll.”

It’s easy to use him as a scapegoat:
a package of ready made excuses for why I
didn’t,
or couldn’t,
or wouldn’t,
do something important.

So easy.

But this time is different, and I’m not going to sit around
while he rips funny comics out of the newspaper
before I get a chance to read them,
and while he stinks up the restroom
with his troll sweat
and other things.

I’m going to patch the crack in my goal
and make it better than it was before,
and put it on display
and go outside and play until
Huey
goes away.