Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

I stopped writing for a while.  Well, here I did.  Writing, though, is a daily occurrence.  There's a new novel in the works, even though I'm still committing guerilla warfare on trying to find an agent.  Or something like that.  More like they are committing omission by silence or bizarre notes of "we love what we read, but we can't take you."  Sounds like the story of my life.  Always.  Auto, rinse, repeat. There's a new academic piece coming out next month, or this. . . Depending on the press's literal press.  There's a new academic piece, part of the forthcoming monograph I have a soft offer on, coming out next fall.  My last monograph should hit paperback next month.  There's a short story under final review.  Wouldn't that be grand?  The one aspect of my life I haven't broken into the publishing world on that I always said was what I wanted to do. As of recent, I'm waking up from seven days in the hospit...

As life goes, last summer I found myself looking at the heartland's horizon, and this summer I'll be duplicating and extending some of these travels.  And with that, I have thoughts.   Yes, I was in the American Midwest, rolling my economical car forward, with iTunes blaring, and some flavored water at my side.   In a poetic manner of speaking, I woke up and found myself on the road.   Though, as we all know, the realities of life don't afford for that.   Instead, I had spent weeks planning, crafting ideas in the wee hours of insomnia on my Pinterest boards, and I had prepped my car.   I had ample data for my GPS, I had a cooler with bottled water and a couple of sandwiches, I had carrot sticks, and I had a somewhat curated playlist.   What that came down to was my asking friends for road trip songs and adding their suggestions to my questionable music library.   I planned to stop and see some old friends, from college and before, but as...