Because you can't live on rage ALL the time...

It's delicious, but not nutritious.

It's been said (can't remember by whom, if you know, please tell me) that writing is a process of breathing in and out very slowly - your mind is always taking in stimuli, percolating it in the secret workshop even you know very little about, and expelling a different kind of gas than you took in. Gradually. It can't be rushed. Writing professionally every week for 14 years was a little like the forced hyperventilation kids do with a paper bag to make themselves faint on command.


So I tell myself it's OK to be introverted and not terribly productive right now. I'm breathing in. I get very protective of my mental space and don't want any stimuli that I didn't choose if I can possibly help it. I walk around in the city enjoying a certain isolation. I have frustrating days, I ask the universe for the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised by something, and I find myself a captive audience of Ray St. Ray, the Singing Cabdriver. Gee, thanks, universe. You can't be guarded and quiet and lost in your own headspace when you're in his cab. First off, I find I simply can't say "No, I don't want to hear a song," because he's so relentlessly cheerful and courteous it would be like kicking a puppy. Then, from his list of subject matter, I have to make sure I don't choose a sex song because, well, just no.

I really, really like his latest obsession, which is the space program and why we never went back to the moon, and how his late-Boomer inner child feels betrayed by all the promises of cool spaceships and Mars vacations. It's sad, it's funny, it's real, it's persistent, and it's really, frankly, a hell of a lot more interesting than the tedious crap I was brooding about before he came along and picked up me and my grumpy groceries.

His blog is cool too, but it's harder to be surprised by it.