Eating Crackers with a Ghost

Writer David Foster Wallace has died, apparently by his own hand, at the age of 46.

I’m not going to claim to be a fan (and I’m definitely not going to claim that I’ve even attempted to get through his masterwork, Infinite Jest–and I’m convinced after all these years that probably at least half the people who claim that they’ve finished Infinite Jest are lying). My usual approach to Wallace’s work was to begin it, find myself enjoying it, and then end up putting it aside about halfway through because my brain just felt too snowed under to continue.

And I always meant to come back. But I never did. Even the last thing I read by him, his brilliant essay on Roger Federer, I don’t think I ever finished. And I think my inability to finish a Wallace work–big or small–is probably due not only to my lack of intellectual prowess but also to my inability to separate the man and his work from my personal life.

I’m not big on meeting writers whose works have vaulted them to what passes for celebrity in the literary world, mostly because I’m afraid that my personal interaction with them will color my previously-held and future perceptions of their writing. This quirk of mine is a bit odd to me, because I have no problem interpreting the literature of the long-dead through a historicist lens–I love speculating, for example, how the circumstances of Jane Austen’s life may or may not have shaped her novels. But Jane Austen’s long gone, so there’s no chance of a conversation with her screwing up my beliefs about how much of her personality seeped into Emma Woodhouse or Elinor Dashwood.

And at this point, I should probably note that I never actually had a full conversation with David Foster Wallace (I’m guessing the most I ever said to the man was “Thank you”), otherwise this essay runs the risk of being more than it is, of claiming some sort of sadness that I don’t actually feel, of becoming some sort of self-important “Hey, I brushed elbows with that famous dead guy” piece–which isn’t how I mean this at all. The most I can claim is that I moved in the man’s orbit–he was a professor of English and creative writing at Illinois State University during the time that I was working on my Ph.D. in English there. But any shock I feel at his death is less personal and more 1) a by-product of that weird, ineffable feeling you get when someone you once shared air space with dies and 2) the knowledge that people I know well–and a few of whom I actually despise–are feeling some measure of disbelief and sadness right now (and I should note that none of these people that I despise could be counted among Wallace’s close friends and family. I’m not that cold.).

I guess Wallace represents to me, given our overlapping time at ISU, two things: 1) he is a representation of the bizarre behavior people sometimes exhibit when they find themselves in the presence of “celebrity” and 2) he is a reminder, both in his person and in his works, of a very strange period in my life.

When I first started at ISU in the fall of 1996, Infinite Jest had been released a few months earlier and, due mostly to my intense focus on literary works released before 1900, I’d never heard of Wallace, a fact that was greeted with some incredulousness on the part of a few of my grad school colleagues who had come to Normal, Illinois, from far more glamorous places just for the shot at studying with him. Although he taught in the department, I never actually saw him until sometime in late 1997 or early 1998 (and, in fairness, ISU’s English department is the largest in the university and I wasn’t taking creative writing classes). I arrived early to a party at a professor’s house and the only guest who had arrived before my friend and me–a kind of grungy-looking guy with greasy, shoulder-length hair–offered to take my coat and hang it up. And I said, “Thank you.”

And as grunge-guy walked away, my friend gripped my arm to the point that my hand nearly popped off and whispered in my ear, “That was David Foster Wallace. David Foster Wallace just took our coats!”

I think I just shrugged to my friend, but I remember thinking, “That guy? That’s the guy everyone’s swooning over?” (and I do mean swooning–I had a student one semester who informed the entire class that she planned to marry David Foster Wallace if only she could figure out how to “get rid of” his girlfriend. I was mildly disturbed.).  Intellectually, I knew that “geniuses” didn’t have a standard look, but I couldn’t believe that this homeless-looking guy was supposedly one of the great modern literary minds.

So I didn’t run right out and buy Infinite Jest, I didn’t start reading his essays–I just took as a point of pride that I got to teach in the same department as someone who had been deemed one of the great literary lights of the Twentieth Century. And in recalling my somewhat “meh” attitude, I’m not trying to claim some moral or literary superiority over my classmates who seemed to worship him. But for my money, the Illinois State English department was filled with geniuses, students and faculty both. David Foster Wallace just happened to be the best known one, the one who had reached the pinnacle of a field that people outside academia pay attention to.

The paragraph above should not imply, however, that I wasn’t just a little bit intimidated by the guy in spite of myself. One semester, a group of grad students used to gather at Rosie’s Pub in neighboring Bloomington, and several of these students were taking a course from Wallace and would wander over once he let the class go for the evening. Those of us who weren’t in the class used to joke with the ones who were about trying to talk Wallace into joining us some evening–and we’d joke because we figured it would never actually happen. Until it did.

He sat across from me at a table, eating saltine crackers that come in those little plastic restaurant packages (I think I remember him saying something about trying to quit smoking, and knowing that he’d had a past with addiction, I’m sure a bar must not have been the most comfortable place for him), and offering them to those of us sitting around him (and despite the title of this essay, I can’t remember if I actually ate one or not). And I didn’t say a single word to him, because, knowing me, I was probably terrified of saying something stupid. Instead, I just listened to the conversations he was having with the others–mostly the students from his class–conversations I remember almost nothing about, except that at one point, in a context that I don’t remember, he told one of his writing students “No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.”

I got up to go to the bathroom shortly thereafter, and when I came back, Wallace and his students were gone, leaving only me and two of my friends (one of whom was the friend who attended the party with me that I wrote about above). My friends were in the middle of trying to remember lines from A. E. Houseman’s “To An Athlete Dying Young,” and I was curious as to why.

“We’re trying to figure out what poem Wallace was quoting,” they informed me. And I think they were both a bit stunned when I told them that the “poem” our local intellectual celebrity genius had quoted was “Time” by Pink Floyd.

I always liked Wallace after that moment (still didn’t go out and buy Infinite Jest, but…). My relationship with these two friends was deteriorating (and one of them remains in the category of “People I Despise” whom I mentioned above), and he had unknowingly handed me a brief moment of one-upmanship on a cracker-crumb strewn tabletop. The “genius” reassured me of what I’d suspected back when he took my coat at that party. Despite his celebrity, despite an intelligence that would have allowed him to quote any philosopher or poet he wanted, he decided in that moment to dole out wisdom in the form of Pink Floyd lyrics. In that moment, the “genius” was a regular guy, and any one of the grad students around that table was capable of “genius” as well. And even though I never took a class from him, I can’t help but wonder if that’s who he was as a teacher–”I did this, this writing thing, and you can do it, too.”

But even as I write these inconsequential recollections and sit here and try to imagine what Wallace was like as a teacher, I feel anger at the pain these vignettes conjure up. That incident at Rosie’s occurred during a dark period in my life, and there he is, squarely in the middle of that memory. And perhaps that’s why I can’t get through his work–his presence flits around the edges of some of my worst moments, and worship of him stands out among the most insipid qualities of someone whom I would probably still punch in the face if I met that person on the street, even ten years later. I certainly don’t blame Wallace for any of that, of course, but I just hate that in this moment after he has tragically chosen to remove himself from this earth, rather than sitting here and glorifying his work, all I can do is be reminded about anger I’d forgotten I once felt (And for the record, my time at ISU wasn’t a total wash. I still have good friends from that time, I did eventually earn my Ph.D., and I met the man I would eventually marry–who brought to our union, among other things, copies of Infinite Jest and Girl with Curious Hair, not to mention his own parcel of David Foster Wallace stories. So not a total wash by a long shot).

And I also can’t help but wonder, as I suppose everyone must when someone they have come into contact with commits suicide, if whatever darkness overtook the dead was always there. So now, that memory from Rosie’s has an extra layer of pain over it, as I sit here and wonder if part of him was gone, even then–if the seeds of whatever overcame him a few days ago were already taking root.

I can’t glorify in death someone I didn’t really know, someone whose work I’ve barely read, someone whose even tangential connection to my life doesn’t bring back the brightest of memories. But I’m human. I’m human, and I’ve lost people–to death, and to the petty arguments of life. So my sympathies are with David Foster Wallace’s friends and family right now. My sympathies are with the literary world, which has lost one of its shining stars. And my sympathies are with any of my friends, both current and former, who are feeling even a little measure of pain at his shocking loss. Because I once loved you, and loved the things that you loved merely because you loved them, your sadness is my sadness in this moment, even in its smallest measure.

Every Day Should Be a Good Day to Die…

After several days of barely being able to listen to a Dave Matthews Band song without tearing up, I think I’ve finally come to terms with LeRoi Moore’s death.

I know. It’s ridiculous. I didn’t know the man. I don’t know the band personally. But I’ve been a fan of DMB since 1994, and it’s difficult to realize that the band is no longer the same. And while rock history is littered with bands who have carried on after losing a member/s, no matter how the Dave Matthews Band chooses to go on, they will no longer be the “founding five.” And that’s just sad.

I feel like I owe Roi and the band at least a little bit of grieving at this difficult time. 2005 was filled with watershed moments for me, but the most difficult of these was losing my grandfather. I’d lost other family members, but none were quite as close to me as he was. He was not only my “Papa,” but he was also a great pal and my personal hero in many respects. I’ve never cried harder than I did at his funeral, and I still sort of hate going to family gatherings even three years on because I know that he won’t be there. And yet I still expect to see him, and every time I look for him and see nothing but a void.

A few days after Papa’s funeral, I’m driving to work with DMB’s Busted Stuff in my CD player. And “You Never Know” comes on, which had never been one of my favorite songs. But I hadn’t quite dealt with his death yet, so I’m a little too inside my own head (never a good thing when speeding down the Bronx River Parkway) and, consequently, I don’t change the track. And then suddenly, I hear the lyrics almost if I’m hearing them for the first time:

There’s not a moment to lose in the game

Don’t let the troubles in your head

Steal too much time

You’ll soon be dead

So play…

And, suddenly, I got it. By the time, Dave sang “But every day should be a good day to die,” I was almost in tears. 

“You Never Know”

Damn right, you don’t. 

We need to live life so that “every day should be a good day to die.” We can’t take a second of this life for granted, and can’t spare a second not at least attempting to live our dreams. Because you never know if this second might be your last.

Some people might take the lyrics to “You Never Know” to be morbid and depressing, but I see them as inspiring. I took the sadness I was feeling over my grandfather’s death, along with the lessons I’d learned from some other epiphanies I’d had earlier in the year, and committed myself to finishing the first draft of a novel less than six months later. And while I hope that novel gets published someday, just in writing it I feel like I’ve honored my grandfather and how proud he always was of me. And I’ve honored myself and my dreams. And I’ve honored the band that continues to inspire me on an almost daily basis.

So as I’ve done so many times, I just want to thank Dave, Carter, Boyd, Stefan, and, especially at this moment, Leroi–the original five–for giving me and the rest of the world countless hours of music to listen to and dream by.

Don’t lose the dreams inside your head

They’ll only be there until you’re dead

Dream…

Things I Learned While in the Midst of a Hellacious Writer’s Block…

I haven’t posted much to the blog lately, and it’s not because I’ve been writing like crazy in other forums. I just haven’t been writing at all. Nothing. Period. And as much as I’d like to blame my writer’s block on stress at my non-blogging-job-that-actually-pays-me or maybe something wacky in my personal life, neither would be the case. I just seem to be trapped in some inexplicable state that leads me to stare longingly at a blinking cursor on a computer screen, hoping that words magically appear.

But the words don’t magically appear, and then I have to engage in some classic avoidance behavior. So now that I’m forcing myself to sit back down at the computer and write something, anything, I’ll give a full report on what I learned today while I was avoiding trying to write:

1. Everything on my IPod sucks. Everything.

Remember how Bruce Springsteen once sang about “fifty-seven channels and nothing on”? That’s pretty much how I feel about my iPod right now. Music usually helps me write, but not today. I have nearly one-thousand songs on my iPod and I’ve wasted at least three hours today fast-forwarding through my shuffled tracks to the point that I think my thumb fell off ten minutes ago and I just didn’t feel it. All the while, I’m hoping for that one magic song that will shake me out of my writing lethargy. Even the Dave Matthews Band, who have helped me conquer writer’s block on several occasions going all the way back to that Long Dark Night of the Soul otherwise known as Writing My Dissertation, are letting me down today, so I know I’m at condition critical.

But wait–it gets worse, because I also discovered over two hours this afternoon that…

2. The Delta Force may be one of the shittiest movies ever made.

 Yes, you read that right. The Delta Force. Staring Chuck Norris. And also starring Lee Marvin and Martin Balsam and Shelly Winters and a whole bunch of other people who should have known better but were apparently looking for a paycheck back in 1986. 

Brief plot synopsis: Flight is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. Plane lands in Lebanon. Women and children are released. Men are held hostage in Beirut. The Delta Force is called in to rescue the hostages. Lee Marvin barks orders, Chuck Norris kicks ass, hundreds of Arabs die violently while only one Delta Force soldier is killed, the American hostages are rescued and everyone sings “God Bless America” at the end.

The Delta Force is just the kind of movie that I find incredibly icky yet still end up surrendering two hours of my life to for the simple reason that said movie stars Chuck Norris. The same icky-but-fascinating principle also applies to marathons of Walker, Texas Ranger on the Hallmark Channel, the common denominator being, of course, Chuck Norris. So I’ll just go ahead and admit it–I’ll watch anything Chuck Norris does, because it’s bound to be chock full of roundhouse kicks, worthless dialogue, and an over-the-top “Yay America! Testosterone rules!” message. His oeuvre is so against everything I stand for as a human being that the only recourse I have is to laugh hysterically at his awesome ass-kickingness.

However, the two most unintentionally hilarious moments in the movie weren’t courtesy of Chuck Norris. The first occurs when Rat Packer Joey Bishop, as one of the hostages, looks out the window of the school where they are being held and describes visiting Beirut twenty years before, telling his fellow captives that it was “the Las Vegas of the Middle East.” And no, I wasn’t particularly laughing at the fact that a real-life Rat Packer was making a Vegas reference while in character. I was laughing at the fact that he made the reference while looking out a window. Looking out a window that was at street level where anyone could see him. Did I mention that he was being held hostage? Yes?

The second unintentionally funny moment for me was a continuity screw-up that I noticed isn’t listed on IMDB. After the hostages have been rescued, they return to the hijacked plane for a flight to Israel. Nearly every seat is filled with a rescued male hostage, which would be impossible since there were a whole bunch of women and children sitting in those seats who were released from the flight when the terrorists forced it to land. Not to mention the fact that as all the hostages were taking up the seats, the Delta Force guys would have had to stand up for the entire flight, and you know if there had been a flight attendant on board, no one was gonna get away with that.

So, yeah–The Delta Force was two hours of my life that I’m not getting back, and two hours of my life that I could have spent writing a screenplay that was vastly superior to The Delta Force. But I didn’t (or couldn’t). And apparently I hadn’t yet reached my testosterone quotient for the day because I started flipping channels and discovered that…

3. NBC is now airing wrestling on Saturday nights.

I’m not kidding. Wrestling. And I’m not talking Greco-Roman wrestling here. I’m talking about the kind of wrestling where the first twenty minutes of the match is taken up with guys walking around the ring trying to whip the crowd into a frenzy by glaring at them and flexing their muscles. The kind of wrestling that finds guys likely named Rocky or Bubba sitting in the crowd wearing the faces of their favorite warriors on black t-shirts. The kind of wrestling that some people (not me) think is every bit as real as Greco-Roman wrestling rather than some sort of carefully choreographed entertainment spectacle. In fact, they may actually think Greco-Roman wrestling is less real, seeing as how that kind of wrestling is just guys rolling around on the floor in tights, which is just kind of weird and lame and possibly gay (again, this opinion is not my opinion).

Seeing as Chuck Norris was not involved, I watched approximately five minutes of this monstrosity–just long enough to see some guy sporting questionable facial hair and wearing what appeared to be a wet suit give a body slam to some other guy who, frankly, looked just like the first guy, only without the wet suit and the striped chin hair. Yawn.

All this male aggression left me a little hungry, so I wandered into the kitchen where I learned that…

4. Oh my f–king God, I’m a human garbage disposal.

In my effort to avoid going back upstairs to my office to face that infernal blinking cursor and the blank page on which it resides, I managed to somehow ingest the entire contents of my kitchen. I’ll spare you the cataloging of what I ate for the simple reason that not only might you throw up, but I might also throw up if I have to live it all over again in print. And right now, I’m trying desperately to avoid that scene at the end of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Burp.

And so I certainly didn’t learn The Meaning of Life in my day of avoiding my computer, but I was reminded of the fact that I will do absolutely anything to shirk writing when I find that the muse isn’t with me on a particular day.

Tomorrow, I’ll be left with weed-eating and scrubbing toilets. I pray that the muse returns, although I’ll have nothing left in the kitchen to feed her if she does.

So Sorry, John Mayer…

Not that he cares, but I feel I need to publically apologize to John Mayer for all the years I wasted being angry at him rather than recognizing his musical genius. So here goes–John Mayer, I’m really, really sorry, and to make it up to you, I (or other members of my household) have purchased three of your albums and one book of guitar tabs in addition to adding your songs to constant iPod and car CD player rotation. While I realize that none of these actions elevates me to the level of Superfan, I hope that they have at least shown that I am making a good-faith effort to put whatever enmity there was on my part toward you behind us (“us” being defined in this case as “me”).

My John Mayer hate was, initially, justified. Really. In Spring 2002, I was at the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore on East 23rd in NYC when my attention shifted from browsing the shelves to listening to the album playing over the bookstore’s loudspeakers. And I was really confused, because the voice in the songs sounded like Dave Matthews. But it couldn’t have been Dave Matthews, see, because there’s no way that Dave Matthews in any of his permutations (solo, with Tim Reynolds, or with the Dave Matthews Band) is putting out a new album on me without my knowing about it in advance. It just doesn’t happen (and that restraining order should be arriving in three…two…one…).

So I left the bookstore hurt and confused that one of my musical heroes had snuck out some new tunes when I wasn’t paying attention. Fueled by my disappointment, I scoured the Internet and listened to the radio a little more carefully, eventually discovering that what I’d been hearing in the stacks at Shakespeare & Co. was actually Room for Squares by John Mayer.

And so I immediately began hating John Mayer. I hated him for making me think he was Dave Matthews. End of story.

Or sort of. Anyone who’s taken repeat rides on the roller coaster of human emotion knows that hate doesn’t equal indifference. Hate means you care, while the true opposite of caring is indifference. And I found indifference toward John Mayer damn near impossible, because he was everywhere. He was everywhere like fungus in the woods. A fungus in the woods who writes really catchy songs.

Just as an example, I worked with someone who would often play Heavier Things in our shared office, and when she’d ask if I minded, I’d lie and say “No.” Except that I can now admit that I wasn’t really lying. I’d find myself humming the songs to myself on the bus home, even though I still maintained the public front of being a John Mayer-hater (which should not be confused with being a player-hater, which is something entirely different). When Family Guy–in that episode in which Chris develops a giant zit named Doug who makes him do all sorts of nefarious things–took a swipe at John Mayer (Doug makes Chris spray paint “That’s Enough, John Mayer” on a wall), I laughed pretty hard because that John Mayer was just getting what he deserved, you know. And shortly after that episode aired, one of my students and I went to town on John Mayer for about five minutes at the start of class, telling everyone in the room that “Yeah, he sucks because he’s just a big fat Dave Matthews rip-off and what’s up with that anyway and you know he’s an asshole because he dates all those hot female celebrities”, never mind the fact that the ratio of the hotter the girlfriend, the bigger the asshole doesn’t necessarily hold up under all circumstances (and I should know, seeing as I am a) not really that hot, but b) have still managed to date some pretty spectacular assholes in my time). But mostly, this student and I were just riffing for the benefit of the rest of the class who were all sitting there looking at us like “Who the hell is John Mayer?” (and someone eventually transcended the look to actually ask) because in this particular class, most of the students weren’t aware that any musicians existed who weren’t signed to the Death Row label. A fabulous guitar player wasn’t going to register on their radar screens.

And in time, I started to admit that’s what John Mayer was–a fabulous guitar player. I heard songs from the John Mayer Trio album Try while listening to Pandora.com (having created a radio station that revolved around matches to the Dave Matthews Band, of course) and had to say, as someone who’s a fan of Eric Clapton and Robert Cray and, well, anyone who can play a good blues guitar, that this guy was pretty fucking spectacular. But even so, I wasn’t totally giving in. I kept holding out, despite the fact that my teenaged brother-in-law, a guitar player himself whom I look to as my arbiter of all things currently cool, had judged John Mayer as currently, and continuously, cool. But no–my memories of being tricked at the Shakespeare & Co. were just too strong, too bitter, too deeply ingrained in my psyche for me to admit to anything more than “Yeah. That John Mayer. He’s okay, I guess.”

So I wasn’t totally crumbling, but my resistance was weakening. I was meeting with a faculty member in my little cubicle at work, and he was admiring my Dave Matthews Band tour posters (stop laughing–yes, I really do have DMB tour posters hanging up at work) when he suddenly asked “Hey, have you heard of John Mayer? People keep telling me to check him out” (thus proving that academics are almost always several years behind the general public on the pop culture curve). And I found myself saying “Yeah–he’s the real deal.”

What the hell? Where did that come from? Where was my all-consuming hatred, my righteous indignance at being duped in 2002 by this young upstart (who is, I’ve recently discovered, only six years younger than I am–so either he’s not so young or I’m not so old. I vote for option #2)?

And then this happened (Listen at about the 00.48 mark. And then switch to this version with better audio/video and listen to the rest–it’s incredible, although even I’m willing to admit that The Dave’s voice is a little rough). And any remaining anger melted away and the sky cleared and I finally Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Admit that I Like John Mayer.

My big ol’ case of the likes has been aided and abetted by the fact that my husband has started playing guitar in earnest over the last few years and recently began trying his hand at the John Mayer catalog. And when he starts learning someone’s songs, not only does he start looking for guitar tabs online, but he also buys the albums so he can listen to the songs as they’re supposed to be played. So he bought The Village Sessions and Continuum and listened to them in his car over and over. And over. And since I’m frequently in his car, I also listened to them over and over. And over.

I bought him the tab book for Continuum as a Valentine’s Day present, just so he wouldn’t have to mess with sub-standard tabs online–because I want him to play the songs exactly as they were meant to be played. And two weeks ago, I put the copy of Continuum in my car CD player. And I’m not giving it back voluntarily. If hubby wants it, he can go get it when I’m not looking.

And I’ve also learned that in addition to being a musician, John Mayer has performed stand-up, has written for Esquire, and has maintained four blogs. Four. I can’t even maintain one, obviously. So I should be jealous, but jealousy is futile at this point–the anger is gone. All I can do now is stand back and grudgingly admire the man for having a better writing career than I do.

So, there it is–John Mayer, I’m waving my white flag. I can’t fight anymore. I give up, and I apologize for my behavior. My only hope is that you can forgive me.

And, you know, nothing says forgiveness like some free tickets or backstage passes. I’m just sayin’.

 

So Maybe I’m Not Trapped in the Body of a Ninety Year Old…

I tend to do weird things when I have writer’s block and access to the Interwebs. Tonight, I was feeling kind of down because I hadn’t posted to the blog since Friday and couldn’t think of anything to write. And I haven’t done any work this weekend on either Novel #1 or Novel #2, so my shame spiral was spinning ever more quickly downward. But then I stumbled upon one of those websites that purports to tell you your real age–”real age” being your biological age based on health and living habits–and suddenly everything turned around.

Because lo and behold, despite my aches and pains and allergies and general grumpiness about the world and everything in it most days, I’m a full two years younger biologically than I am chronologically. Add this to the fact that people tell me that I look like I’m fifteen (which I guess is a compliment but I don’t know–is it a good thing to look like a fifteen year old these days? Oh, hell–I’ll take it), and apparently I must be doing something right.

Does this site have any medical credibility whatsoever? Frankly, I don’t know. Nor do I particularly care, because according to them, I’ve just snatched two years back from the jaws of death! So yea for me! I’m already calculating ways to get myself down to being biologically twenty-five by the end of the summer (with an ass to match, hopefully). By Christmas, I hope to be back in third grade.

Seriously though, this test did a pretty good job of telling me a bunch of things I already know about my life and then boiling it down to that big fat number none of us can escape–age. I know my diet consists of not enough fruit and too much chocolate. I know that when I’m at work, walking from my desk to the bathroom doesn’t really count as exercise. I know that French fries, no matter how much I try to will them to be so, are not a food group. And, yes, I know I need to see an allergist–apparently, not controlling my allergies was one of those things that prevented my biological age from being even lower. Who knew allergies can actually age you? Bring on the shots–stat!

But what I was happy to see was that some of my Nervous Nelly behaviors–such as not using my cell phone while driving and only driving a few miles over the speed limit–may actually be lengthening my life (and if speeding while talking on a cell phone really does shorten one’s life, then I know a few people who should have died years ago. Seriously. I mean, half the people driving in New York City should have a biological age of 4,786 just based on these two categories alone.). And, apparently, having a wide circle of friends and a happy marriage contribute to a long life as well, although considering as I was taking the test for myself I was mentally answering the questions for several of my friends and guessing what their scores would be, I would venture that my social circle will be much smaller in about fifteen years as all of my friends will be dead.

So knowing that I’m really, deep, deep down inside two years younger than I thought I was isn’t going to help me sell Novel #1 or finish Novel #2, and it isn’t going to help me make this blog any more interesting, nor will it landscape the jungle mascarading as my lawn, finish the projects I have sitting on my work calendar for this week, or clean my house. But right now, on a Sunday night when I’m sitting around bummed at the end of another weekend of non-accomplishment, the discovery of my newfound youth is no small victory, and tonight I’ll go to bed happy (which should lower my age by at least another few months).