Oh, To Channel Bobby Ewing...

Post-A Season-Long Dream / Nightmare, I Unfortunately Don't Look That Good In The Shower

Well...

I'm back.

I wasn't dead, mauled by PUMAs or beaten into a coma by wingnuts swinging heavy teabags.

Time and a simple thing called creative routine simply rendered me unable to do something which I very much love to do, and that's write well and have people perhaps enjoy said writing.

I am a creature of creative routine. As an artist and writer, my muse generally visits me between the hours of two in the afternoon and five a.m. This has been my schedule believe it or not, since I was about twelve years old. My brain just fires off better at those hours than any others. I can flounder about during the early part of a day, thoughts and ideas scattered like dry leaves in a furtive breeze and then feel something almost physically go “click” once the afternoon sun hits my face. I'm on like Donkey Kong then.

I can't explain it. It's how I'm wired.

My writing here at GNB and in my blog commenting before—at least what I deem the best of it was birthed in those odd hours. And thanks to a lighter employment workload—a.k.a. a second-term Bush layoff, I had more time to give to writing. One of the reasons I always gave for not doing this all the time was the time involved in doing it well. I will always marvel at how Steve managed to pull this off so well with all the responsibilities and vagaries of life pulling at him.

So, I wrote, and wrote and wrote when I had the time.

And then, thankfully, that sexy-ass babe called employment saw fit to give me the time of day once again, and my time was then...constrained.

Worse yet, the new work shift I had coincided exactly the time that I was most creative. Twi-light.

But...bills have gotta get paid, kids.

So I worked...and saw the whole, wide world going by me, with me unable to comment or analyze it with the zeal or quality I would have liked. Oh yes, I tried writing in the drowsy mornings, sleep in my eyes and a downer of knowing that afterwards, I could not bask in a job well-done, but was effectively working under the gun, where I could not at this new job take the little bits of time I liked to tweak and hone a soft-ish post into something better. And trust me...my morning writing was as soft as hell, people. I couldn't do it...or rather, I couldn't do it right. At least, not in a way I would feel good about putting the stuff out there for you to see. With that, I walked away. Just walked away, because it pained me to even think of putting crap out there. And if not crap, well at the least, something other than what I deemed satisfactory. Add to that, the stress of Mrs. LowerManhattanite's job also hanging by the thinly wound filaments of sentimentality by her boss, and the dumb luck of her being one of the few in her region capable of doing her particular job, and with that, my workload increasing out of fear that even those things might not save her, and you have a rich stew of reasons why I have been away.

Maybe you missed me, maybe you didn't—but I sure as hell missed talking to you, and sharing and thinking out loud.

Things have stabilized a bit thankfully, and I have recently found a new way to get my ideas down while at work, and in my travels to and from that makes it easier to use what time I have to do what I love in a way that I can feel good about it again.

Thus, this missive.

So, we'll be catching up, kids. Maybe not with the frequency of before, but at least I can do something halfway decent again—and that means an awful lot. Fortunately too, my lifelong enemies have not failed in continuing to underhand beach balls towards my deep irony-stained Louisville Slugger of analysis. If anything, the sillyfuck likes of Sarah Palin, Lou Dobbs and the racist, retrograde, runny-brained Republicans on parade these last few months are rolling the Goddamned beach ball at us all...so. swing away I shall, from here on in. At those fools, but also at injustice in general, while also commenting on everything else I see fit—sports, pop culture, history, the day's latest kerfuffle, or just something to make you either smile, think...or maybe both.

So...with that? I'm back.

I may have a home run or two left in me. :)