Whoa.

So.

Not so much with the posting lately, huh?

When this brand new year began, I set myself a couple goals for what I wanted to do with this blog (those goals including: a) write something in this blank white composition box; and, 2) hit that cute little orange "Publish" button from time to time), and as is illustrated by these 12 days of silence, I'm failing miserably in achieving those goals this month. However, in my defense, February has at least 2,880 (and sometimes as many as 4,320!) fewer minutes than all the other months on the calendar. So time was most definitely working against me.

I'm in a bit of a February funk, and every evening when I thought maybe I should sit down and put some words here, I pondered the self-indulgence of this blog project...always talking about "I" and "me" and "my" and more with the "I" again...and my mind always flashed to the catchy title of that fun grammar book, "Woe Is I."

Instead of focusing on the "I" part of that title—"I like chicken wings," or "I think Matt Millen's a big goofy clod," or "I wish coffee grounds would stay buried in the, um, ground"—I spent more time focusing on the "woe." I've had a February filled mostly with woe. And I figured no one really wanted to read about the woe, I didn't feel much like talking about the woe, so my solution was to stay away from the blog so as not to reveal the woe.

Don't get me wrong, I like talking about "I" and "me" as much as the next guy, and more of that is soon to follow, to be sure. And I've been doing a few things that needed doing in order to say "Whoa!" to the woe, and get back to rambling about odd topics and attempting to invent B-grade jokes to include in these paragraphs.

Went and spent some "just hangin' out" time with some of my very favorite people, and saw life from a 5-year-old's perspective. You know what's important to a 5-year-old? Duck Duck Goose, hopping around on one foot, and playing tic-tac-toe. (Or should I say...winning at tic-tac-toe. Because every time we played, she'd start, and I'd always block her first attempt at three X's in a row, and then she'd creatively add an extra row to the grid, or sneak an extra X in there somehow, or erase my O. Little did she know that I would have let her win a couple moves later. But the game never seemed to advance far enough for that.)

Anyway...today, I've just been out to run a few errands and gather some essential supplies—bread, water, duct tape, roll of 6 Mil plastic sheeting, beer, pork rinds, 55-gallon drum of cooking lard, red felt-tip markers, one gross of AA batteries, and the entire Britney Spears discography—and plan to spend the rest of my weekend hibernating and watching it snow.

For now, I'm going to go and organize my bookshelves. (shut up. it's therapeutic.)

"Whoa! to the woe."

Million-dollar mantra that will one day be the cornerstone of a motivational speaking empire rivaling that of Tony Robbins? Or ridiculous use of homonyms that'll never even sell a dozen bumper stickers?

(Don't answer that.)

"Talk happiness.

The world is sad enough

without your woe."

—Orison Swett Marden