500

I did it! 500 subscribers!

I’m at almost five hundred subscribers.

I have a great idea!

What if I mark the occasion with a story?

Yes! Something with the number five hundred in it would be perfect!

But five hundred what?

Google!

Ugh. Boring.

Wait. What just happened? Stupid computer.

Hold on while I reboot.

Okay.

Ummm… totally drawing a blank. Ugh.

500… 500… 500 what?

Ugh. I hate to do this, but let’s see if AI has any ideas.

OH CLAUDE!

OH, COME ON!!!

Maybe I can ask someone for ideas. Put a note up and see if they have some ideas.

What the heck?!?

Why is nothing working? I just need something… anything with the number five hundred for this story!

Okay, okay, okay. I know what to do. What I always do. Let’s just go back to WORD and start typing. Get those fingers moving. Something’s bound to come to mind, right?

Et tu, WORD. Et tu?

I’m starting to feel like the universe is working against me here.

Waaaaaaaait. What if the universe isn’t working against me? What if it’s trying to tell me something?

What though?

Oh.

Oh no.

I see what’s happening here!

Well crap.

I see what you’re trying to say, Universe.

I’m never going to make it to five hundred, am I?

I mean what else could it be?

Well damn.

You know, Universe, you didn’t have to be so mean about it.

You could have done something a bit more friendly like flowers, or a card, or even one of those “I hope this email finds you well” things.

But NOOOOO, it’s just error message after error message.

Wait. Are the error messages themselves trying to tell me something?

Hmmm? I mean is there something they all have in common that I’m missing?

Nah.

Dang it!

Here I was, trying to come up with something clever to celebrate what I thought was going to be a happy thing. I mean five hundred subscribers. Five hundred actual… for the most part… I think… real people who like my stories enough to get an email notification whenever I put up a new one.

Five hundred. Now that’s a pretty big number, isn’t it?

Too big though.

It’s a number I guess I’ll never see.

Should I even keep trying?

Oh, what’s the point?

The universe is pretty clear on this one.

You know what?

No. I’m not going to give up that easy.

In fact, you know what I’m going to do?

I’m going to make up a story about THIS!

Yeah! Take that Universe!

It’ll have me trying over and over to come up with an idea.

It’ll have all the things that tried to stop me.

It’ll have my moment of doubt.

And finally, it will have the moment I decided to push through anyway, even in the face of obstinnance.

I got this!

Where to start?

The errors maybe?

Wait. The Errors.

Oh duh!

The errors are the story.

It’s about five hundred after all!