Gemotions

The little card, with its silly cartoon animals, felt like a brick. He didn't recognize the handwriting, which was all spidery loops and flourishes. He tossed it onto the cluttered desk, where it landed amongst the rejected drafts and half-finished projects. He felt a familiar hollowness in his chest.

He should be writing. He needed to meet the deadline. But the words wouldn't come. The creative well had run dry, and the pressure to produce, to perform, to *be* something, was suffocating. He paced the small room, his footsteps echoing in the silence.

He yearned for escape, for a change of scenery. He was stifled, stuck in his own skin, suffocating from the weight of his own unrealized ambition. The unopened card seemed to ask him to celebrate a life that was a prison.