anybody still here?

Just to show you guys I haven't totally abandoned this place-- here's a little essay I just wrote. Maybe to kick myself in the ass more than anything else.

I promise I'm going to reboot the quest. And it'll be sooner than you think.

"Bushisms"

How does it feel to watch your life pass you by?

I used to have one of those 365-day desk calendars next to my computer. "365 Bushisms". It was a gift from my uncle-- he's the type of guy who still gets his yuks from the daily Garfield. He thought it would give me a chuckle. I'm sure you've seen them before. They weren't even current in 2002. That's not why I got rid of it-- although that's a pretty damn good reason.

No, I got rid of it because it was too convenient of a metaphor. On a Tuesday I would rip Monday's page off the calendar, crumple it up and chuck it into the trash. Then on Wednesday, I'd rip Tuesday's page off and throw it away. Pretty soon there was a mound of balled-up Bushisms in my trash bin. And every day I would look into that bin and think about how many days I'd thrown away.

I'm a writer. Or at least, that's what I tell people. I'd certainly like to be a writer. I can't imagine anything better than waking up at noon, lounging around all day and tapping out a few hours' worth of garbage for a team of editors to pore through and rewrite, and getting paid for it. After all I already have the lounging-around part down pat, and sometimes I even wake up AFTER noon, so I guess you could call me an overachiever. But the funny thing about being a writer-- occasionally you have to write.

There's still a big pile of old forgotten calendar pages in my trash bin. One wasted day reads, "'My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions.' -George W. Bush"

Well, I'm a decision-maker too. Today I decided I'm not going to let these missed chances haunt me anymore. I'm going to start something-- something BIG. But first I'm going to empty the trash.

Haven't really gotten around to it yet, though.

But I will. Oh, I will.