--I LIKE TO HEAR YOU LAUGH

 

…I cut my hair.  It’s the shortest it’s been in decades.  Normally I am the shaggy, long-locked type.  A friend told me I had “wacky writer hair.”  Now I have John Ham hair and I don’t necessarily like it.

…Did you know, aside from Christmas, that Halloween is the most commercial holiday we have in terms of consumer spending?  Kind of weird.

For Halloween, Americans spend:
$370 million on costumes for PETS
$1 billion on costumes for kids
$1.2 billion on costumes for adults
1.1 billion pounds of pumpkins are bought

As a kid, Halloween was always my favorite holiday.  Growing up poor, in a large family without snacks or candy available, it was a special kind of enterprise and I’d take a pillow case and run door-to-door collecting as much as I could, then back home, I’d sort the booty by category and ration it out so that it would last as long as possible.

My costumes were always homemade, simple and undeniably non-threatening.  Once I dressed as a female but couldn’t handle the high heels and so I threw them off to expedite my Trick-or-Treating.

Once I was a dishelved pirate.

…I’ve been thinking a lot about the notion of friendship and how important friends are.  I’m at a place in my life—a writer who sits in a space all day alone—where subjects such as friendship percolate readily.

It’s hard to live alone, without any connections.  When you get to a certain point, you realize that friendships require effort and so I’m trying to be the best friend I can be, whenever I can.

…I like these things for the weekend:

"A friend is one who sees through you and still enjoys the view." Wilma Askinas

"And I think, that's what we should all leave behind.  Faucets that work.  That don't drip." Alex Pruteanu

”People tend to think of happiness as a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly." Elizabeth Gilbert

 "A crooked road, a road in which the foot feels acutely the stones beneath it, a road that turns back on itself--this is the road of art." Shkolovsky

"Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Writing is one hard slog, and those who practice it, need all the help we can get." Carol LaChapelle

"I think that's how we leave, signaling our impostors to replace us." Erica Wright