GROAN

"My name is Kanye, and I do not have an office job."

The first week back from vacation is always a very difficult transition. One would think that after being away from a job for so long you would be refreshed and revived. One would be completely wrong.

The thing about freedom, about not having meetings, and about being home is that this is when you feel most human. Like you have control over your own actions. Like you have the capacity to make decisions. Paradoxically, as a cog in the machine, you are stripped of all that. Corporate America, and all jobs, for that matter, is about the resignation of your ego and free will. This isn't a bad thing or a good thing. Nor is it profound. It just is.

And yet, we subject ourselves to this. We all have goals and aspirations, specifically this time of year, and how disappointed are we in ourselves when we can't quite fulfill or meet those expectations. Ask me about the promise I made to myself on January 1st to write two pages a day on my book. Go ahead. Ask me.

Better yet, don't. But I've been spending the better part of the past four days trying to figure out my inability to find the self-control. And it's not like the other things I'm doing to distract myself from this project are worthwhile. Do you think I needed to watch two episodes of the Big Bang Theory? Did I really need to go to sleep last night at 10:15? Why am I compulsively checking blogs about shoes? One answer is the fear of failure. Complete my project and it's bad and then what. I've wasted all that time.

Another reason is that I'm having a hard time finding passion in just about anything I do. I'm the Tin Man with a bit of the Cowardly Lion (sure, give me pigtails and I'll be Dorothy, too). I've been conditioned to lose heart after years and years of being at the bottom of a hierarchy. When your opinion is just the ground floor of a skyscraper, maybe you're acclimated to the temperature of the lobby?

Whatever it ultimately is--this self-imposed creative paralysis--it's my hope in 2012 to find it. This past weekend, I read about the Christopher Paolini the writer of Eragon and how he wrote his first book in 2003 when he was 18, and he's written four books since then which have all gone on to sell 25 million copies total. I wish I had his discipline.

He also has a sword. I wish I had his sword.