Faced with a blank screen, I'm finding it excruciating to choose a topic. I can't ask the internet for topics, because then I'm admitting to the world that my topic-bin is not full, overflowing, ever-rejuvenated. I think there might be some sort of topic shortage in my neighborhood.

Except that other people have topics. So it must be something with me. Or maybe my brain is on vacation. When your brain is as overactive as mine is (you do NOT want to hear my inner monologue), you find that sometimes you just can't get it to come back from whatever adventure it's on.

When I was a kid, the adventures were mostly about being James Bond or a ninja. As a kid, I had all kinds of freedom to let my body act out whatever it was that I was imagining -- the halls of my house would become the warehouse where the evil Dr. No had stashed his doomsday device and I was sneaking through the halls dispatching bad guys with perfectly-timed kicks and punches. My cat, Smokey, was my 'Q', giving me the ultimate spy gear: and not just the stingy two or three toys from a Bond movie, either.

I had laser watches and shuriken business cards and an Aston Martin ( which I had to use my feet to move since it was really my orange-and-yellow fisher-price clown car, but that was part of the gadgetry since it was wayyyy more precise than just a gas-and-brake pedal ) and a taser pen and a jet pack. Because sneaking through the halls of the house wasn't nearly as fun as running full-bore.

I had dialogue, too. Showdown talk, like "nice shark tank."

As an adult, I just don't say "nice shark tank" enough.

But now, I find myself mentally acting out conversations I expect to have. I take both sides, imagining what my boss or coworker or someone would say to me and brilliantly defending my points. And then I go in and the conversations never actually happen and I fumble over my, "uh, okay." Because I am slick like that.

So if you see me walking, distracted by an internal dialogue, you know that either I'm having an intense debate where I say all the right things, or I'm sneaking through SPECTRE's latest doomsday device with my shuriken business cards.

It's okay. It's my imagination, so I almost always win.