Passing Thoughts...

* What if you start a blog and discover you have nothing to say?

* It takes almost as long to write about what's happening as it does to live through what's happening.

* If I were to pre-think my journal and write only the nub - the essence, the lessons learned, the insights -- then it would go faster. And be more productive. And isn't likely to happen....

* I have become crankier in my old age. Being ignored, which happens regularly, makes me crazy: my wife and kids tune me out. I find I am brooding about trivial slights more.

* Saw Childe Hassam at Met in NY in Sept with Vicki. Some of his work is more earnest than the best of the Impressionists. Other works are so completely over my head it depresses me all over again.

* Art advisor says must be obsessed with art, sacrifice everything else (he means, other pursuits) to artmaking, and do art all the time. He's right. It'll never happen. I am just a hobbyist, which is all right except I am not even that--hardly ever work at it. Do I really think when I retire I will become more motivated and less lazy?

* NYC has returned to the glory it was in the 1930s and 1950s when it was the greatest city in the world. The crime and awfulness of the city in the 70s and 80s has completely disappeared. People are actually nice. I'd love to live in Manhattan. Or at least be bicoastal. Told brother-in-law Eugene we'd stay in his second, unrented (?!? is he insane??) condo in Brooklyn two months a year -- spring and fall -- and pay him rent.