This happens every couple of weeks. I'll watch a movie or read a book, and when I'm finished, things are different. You know, like they would be if you had come back home to your family after a long trip to somewhere you've never been. And you're eyes are opened to someone else's world, the one created on screen or in the pages. I may cry, or speak very little, or start writing more songs that night, most of them with a half a verse and a chorus. But whatever the catalyst, the result of a more emotional state for me is always to remember what it was like to be a kid, age 7-10. I remember the sound of my own name, Joe...Joe Vaughn, (my parents disguised me as a regular guy) it was the weight of my own potential tipping me forward through 3rd and 4th grade. It is the purest kind of feeling I can recall. Now fast forward about twenty years. The same kid, a little less self conscious, but practically the same kid. What happened to all that potential?

(Okay I'm going to do it. Yes. Switch narratives on you. No complaining.) And what does he do about it? He goes to bed early so that he can get up early. He eats out after work with friends. He looks for opportunities to meet someone new and exciting. But mostly he goes to work and tries to appear worth more than he was last week. And berrates himself for not doing more with his time after 5:30 p.m. He makes promises to himself, but knows himself too well. He laughs as much as possible, inventing a new sense of humor about every little thing. Laughing helps a lot.

(I'm done with the third person now, thanks for that.) Every night when I sit down to write on this thing, I find it harder and harder to find something worth writing about. I always believed that writers were not primarily writers, but primarily something else about which they could write. So when I sit down here, there's a big window right behind my computer. It's probably the best view I've had from any window that has ever been in any place that I've lived. It covers most of the wall. I can see the downtown skyline from my window, about a mile away. And it has come to represent my land of milk and honey. I go there all the time. Literally. When I'm there, I don't think about it this way, only when I see it from my window. It makes me want to get busy doing something, something that I should be written about. Not to memorialize it, but because...a rose is a rose I guess. It just feels better to be doing anything that you love to do when you are inspired. And let me say, at the moment that I am not inspired. No, this is not good at all.

But wait!!! The great thing about being me, is that change is never too far away. A friend told me last night that 7 out of 10 Americans do not welcome change into their lives. A big reason, in my opinion, why it is hard for us to be a more spiritual society. Well if change comes a knockin' on one of ya'll's door, I've kinda got a hankerin', so pass the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket. If you're not going to take the last drumstick, I certainly won't be shy about it.