The Doldrums
Sometimes the doldrums come skulking around, like some old bone-tired hungry hound dog begging for handouts but too pitiful even to look you in the eye. Hardly looking at anything, really. All squinting and skulkified and pitiful. Thinking, “I’m just gonna creep up beside you and wait a spell. Don’t make any sudden movements, now. I ain’t gonna bite you - sure enough - ain’t gonna look at you, much less bite you. If’n you wanna toss me a scrap - that’d be fine. Just fine. If’n not, well. Reckon I’m just gonna hang around a while to make sure you ain’t gonna change your mind anytime soon. No sir, ain’t gonna look at you, much less bite you.”
Sometimes there is nothing to do but wait it out for a while. Sometimes that works. Sometimes that’s all it is; just a matter of time. Then there are other times when that old hound dog gets it in his mind that here is just as good as over there, and he lowers his old bones to the cold dusty ground. Lays there looking up at you (only not really looking at you, just squinting up in your general direction). You didn’t even toss him so much as a scrap of old leather to gnaw on, to get his jaw a’workin’, to get him expecting another snack. Maybe next time a proper meal.
No, nothing worse than feeding him. He might just take up residency for good then. But you did not encourage the old dog - not this time - you did not fall for that old trick of the young and foolhardy. You ignored him, disregarded his soft whimperings without failing. Indeed, you were almost cruel to that old bag-o-bones.
But sometimes the doldrums linger. Sometimes that old dog has walked the same familiar dusty road for so many years that he gets too tired to pick himself up and move himself along. Sometimes he’s been beat down one too many times and he just wants to sit there, quiet in your shadow, content just to sit there, enjoying your lack of productivity and the silent, lackadaisical company of one such as yourself. Taking up your time, your talent, your best, and your worst. Everything you’ve built yourself up toward and ever hoped to be in this big world, he drags down (just by his presence there at your feet, he drags you down). And he’s polite about it, to be sure. Ever only polite, and careful, and quietly lingering. Wouldn’t bite you if he could.