Day Nine

Today I wrote about a thousand words. In my first ten days here, all told, I will have written a bit over 10,000 words total, which will put me on pace, of course, for 30,000 by the end of the month, which would be enough to complete the first draft of the project. For the following day I plan to write nothing and to mostly stay in the hostel. I must rest before heading to Madrid.

I went out for the night with a girl named Claire, who is from the UK. She is looking for jobs in Barcelona as an English teacher. She is also an aspiring novelist, although I get the sense that she has not developed the appropriate discipline to complete her project, which she says she has been working on for the last three years. But then it is impossible to know.

In any case, we got along very well, and her company may well have broken the anhedonia that I have been feeling the last few days. I have found that it can be excruciating to be by oneself in a place like this. I arrived here, in part, with the goal of learning how to be alone, to be exalted by solitude. But that has not happened. Instead it seems I am learning the opposite.

Claire's flight back home was the following morning, but there is a small chance that I will see her again before I leave Spain. I think I have an affinity for the British.

I also went to the Parc Guell, which is a truly gorgeous tourist trap.