—I’M NOT HOLDING MY BREATH. YOU?

 

…I never know what to do when my computer won’t do what it’s supposed to.

 

…I still can’t tell you what a carburetor or predicate is.

 

…I want my joy pure without that echo in my head. 

 

…Whenever I hear myself starting to get a little too bleak on here, I hear my best friend asking, “Are you okay, dude?” and try to course correct, though sometimes it’s too late.

 

…I can only recall my best friend coming to my office once in 24 years’ time. After he left, my Admin came in all flushed and said, “I feel like I just met a Beatle.” That’s how much I loved the guy, and still do.

 

…Critter and Clover, the two parakeets in our house, love the sound of running water. Any time I’m at the sink, they immediately go bonkers. I always think this has something to do with their ancient DNA, like hearing the sound of waterfalls in the rainforest. But for some other reason entirely, they always love football.

 

…The best advice I ever got from my dad (and maybe the only advice I remember): You may not be smarter than everyone else, but you can always out-work them. 

 

…Can you tell a story wrong? I suppose it depends on the story.

 

…You’re all you’ve got.

 

…Even in the face of an apocalypse, it turns out to be pretty easy to have one’s feelings hurt. 

 

…You can appreciate things at four in the morning that would go right on past you during the day.

 

…What’s a little too easy is getting sucked into a bad place.

 

…The mind pulls a blindfold out of its pocket on certain occasions.

 

…I always wondered why there are so many personal injury lawyer ads, but then I learned Washington state has 80,000 car accidents every year.

 

…I thought this was interesting, especially given that the vast majority of young people, especially Red-leaning young white males, get their news from the internet:

“Let’s not forget that the people who consumed a lot of media about the Boston Marathon bombing experienced “higher acute stress” than those who were actually at the bombing. Screens contribute to a catastrophizing mind-set.” S.K. Sterling, PhD

 

…“I will never be young again. Or any younger than I am today. I will never be faster or more flexible. I will never win competitions against 22-year-old wrestlers in my weight class. I will never be a black belt. None of these things will happen. But none of that matters anymore.” Anthony Bourdain

 

…Remember how good it felt to hug someone for the first time after COVID?

 

…If I know one thing, I know one thing.

 

…Me going on a book tour is me slipping under the covers and turning on the bedside lamp with a book in one hand and a pen in the other.

 

…Writers who don’t write are unhappy people.

 

…"Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn't completely wreck your life." Phillip Roth

 

…“Research suggests that most friendships dissolve over time due to life transitions, with up to 70% of friendships ending after seven years,” Dr. Christina Lee

 

…The easiest way to fix it is to just ignore it.

 

…But, like the pandemic, it’ll still be there in the morning. 

 

…“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.” James Baldwin

 

…What love means to the people who love me, I don’t know.

 

…“Like the man said: eat dessert first, life is uncertain. Point being, the way the world turns, the inevitable grind of history seems to indicate that places like this and people like this get plowed under, pushed aside, paved over.

Who owns paradise, after all? Who, in the end, gets to own paradise, use paradise or even visit it? That’s a question that’s probably worth paying attention to before there’s none left at all.” Anthony Bourdain 

 

…This is a little bit how I feel about my blog…

“I don't really care whether people like the show. Ideally, you'll really like this episode, you'll hate next week's episode, you'll be confused by the following week's episode and you'll love the one after that. That would be perfect for me. I just don't want to do the same thing all the time. If you are reliably making people, even your core audience, happy, you are doing something wrong. I'm much more interested in trying to be creative, trying to stay interested, trying to push my crew and my creative partners to do their best work. I'm fully aware that, if that's your priority, you are going to make some people unhappy on a regular basis. That's what I do. I don't know if that's a recipe for success. It probably isn't. The recipe for success is to make the stupidest show about bacon and burgers, fill it with plenty of rodeos and Americana, get yourself frosted tips and some goofy cargo shorts and a signature look and be sure you have a catch phrase, and you are well on your way.”

–Anthony Bourdain

 

…I don’t want to transition or anything, but sometimes I wish I wasn’t a male.

 

…I saw a huge sign in an outdoor mall that read: 

SAVE 100% 

WHEN YOU 

DON’T BUY 

ANYTHING 

 

…“Hurting yourself is easy. Living is hard.” Loudermilk

 

…Is there really light at the end of the tunnel? Hmmm.

 

…Remember when we were going to                        ?

 

…Those ducks showed up right in the nick of time. (Also, that’s an expression I’ve never used before in my life.)

 

…If there’s such a thing as better than flawless it would be “Adolescence.” 

 

…I saw an ad for a company that makes incredible recreations of dogs and their push was to get a replica of a deceased pet for someone to help them with the grieving process, but every single image was of some person squeezing the stuffed animal while sobbing uncontrollably.

 

…“The air tastes braless when I’m drunk.” Kandace Siobhan Walker

 

…Let’s get the day back, shall we?