Yes, I'm happily married, but...

I'm still crushing on Terry Teachout, whose writing is as crisp and juicy as a Granny Smith apple. The guy is unfailingly polite and good-natured, he has a sentimental streak, and his blog is the absolute best out there.

He talks quite a bit about writing, which is why you should read his blog even if you're not interested in the arts scene (he's a drama and music critic). Yesterday he blogged about dragging his feet when he needed to be writing. And then this morning he had me nodding energetically at this:

Paul Gigot, my boss at The Wall Street Journal, asked me
not long ago where I found the energy to blog each day. I
replied that writing “About Last Night” was so
intellectually stimulating that the energy seemed to
generate itself. As I’ve said before, I think of this blog as
a kind of sketchbook, a public place in which I can think
out loud in front of an audience, playing with ideas that
in time may find their way into more elaborate print-
media pieces. (H.L. Mencken did much the same thing
with his weekly op-ed column in the Baltimore Sun,
which is where I got the idea.) It’s a different kind of
writing, of course, more immediate and less formal,
which makes it easier to turn out.

Exactly. That's why I started this blog. It's all about stimulating my imagination. Some of you have asked where I find the time to do all this online stuff, and my answer is that researching and writing these blog entries isn't "work", it's relaxation. I do this the same way many of you watch television. This is my idea of mental recreation.

I never expected this blog to take off the way it has, but your warm reception is what has encouraged me to post entries six days a week for the past six weeks. I'm profoundly grateful to those of you who stop by here every day to see what nonsense I'm spouting. I'll keep doing this as long as it's fun, and I'd just like to say that your comments and e-mails are a large part of what makes it fun.

Thank you.