I stood in my backyard last night. Just before 1 a.m. It wasn't meant to be a symbolic moment. In truth, I was just letting the dogs out to pee before calling it a night. But in the crisp darkness and 50 degree temperature I call California-cold, I looked up at the sky and saw the three bright diagonal stars of Orion's belt blazing just above. Ptolemy named Orion one of the original 48 constellations back in the 2nd Century. Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Each is more than 1,200 light years away. I traced the asterism known as Sword of Orion, dangling straight down from the belt. If you know where to look, there is also Betelgeuse and the shoulders and the shape of a great hunter.
GREEN ARROWS
I usually blog on Sunday while watching NFL Red Zone. The rest of the week is for regular creativity. But tomorrow is the Southern Section Cross Country Championships and I'm a little preoccupied with race strategy, the rain currently pelting Southern California, and oblique terms like “green arrows” and “tight spread.”
FANTASY
If you've got a fantasy football team that title means a very different thing than most who don't. I should actually change it to "agony," because that's what's happening with my team right now. Injuries, off days, and an amazing level of unpredictability have rendered this season a horror show. Thus I search for other outrageous hopes and dreams — fantasies, if you will — to come true.
PROMOTIONS AND PRESALES
ROYALTIES
The email came this week, one of those wonderful moments when money drops from the sky. My former agency was writing to tell me that I would soon be receiving a royalty check for Into Africa. I wrote the book in 2001. Published in 2003. It was a sudden cash bonus for words I put on the page before my grown children were teenagers. So long ago that the first season of Survivor hadn't been aired. George W. Bush was barely president. 9/11 actually took place on the day I sat down to write the first chapter. I left my office to get a glass of water and the Today Show was projecting images of a plane flying into the first tower.
CREATIVITY
"Creativity is contagious. When we spend time with other artistic people we absorb and exchange a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world," writes Rick Rubin in The Creative Act. I'm still tiptoeing through this very patient treatise. It's one of those books you read slowly and thoughtfully, not rushing through each line to better absorb each word.
FLY YOUR FLAG
I am trying to give up doom scrolling. The algorithm knows me well, sucking me in and holding my attention. I don't usually pay attention until the evening, when Callie and I are hanging out and I'm not too interested in another episode of SVU.
Doom scrolling doesn't feel toxic in the moment, but in the four nights I have avoided looking at my phone I've slept better. No anxious 3 am wakeup, no need to take deep calming breaths in the darkness. I often lie there and wonder what I'm worried about and have absolutely no answer.
