-- Wednesday, March 15, 2000 --

2:05 a.m. Something incredibly powerful must have been going on with the stars and the heavens and their alignments today, because really: Whew! Rock and roll. Did you have that kind of day, too?

It made it fun to answer the phone; fun to open email, fun to answer the doorbell. Good news! The wall is drying out. Good news! The cover has made it to the next stage! Good news! We signed another book project!

And I've been slowly weaving my own projects into the beginnings of a sturdy order -- making files, designing letterhead, cleaning up the hard drives ... getting ready for the next big push ahead. Laying the groundwork, creating the structure ...

And yesterday, while I was waiting for a 48 meg file to go through the binhex machine and emerge at 60 megs and ultimately not be usable, I had to do something useful with myself while remaining near, but not on, my machine. I decided to organize the magazines.

One of my more favorite tasks, let me tell you. I don't subscribe to very many magazines anymore because no matter how much I love it when I'm filling out the postcard, I can pretty much predict that several months will go by and the passion that once drove me to subscribe will have cooled to the rennet stage.

In the long run, it's cheaper to go to the store and decide if I'm in a computer phase, a sewing phase, a writing or a decorating or a weight-loss frenzy. And there are magazines for any frenzy under the sun, you know. Gardening with water. Living surrounded by water. Making dollhouse furniture. Living in a Craftsman house. Collecting rocks. Reporting UFOs. Walking. Just walking.

I've always wanted to start my own magazine, on the kitchen table, just like Jann. Some of the world's great fortunes have come from creating a magazines; at the very least, I could redeem myself for all these years of collecting. I don't know why I save them; I just do ... I also like to stack them, carefully, by date. Maybe I'll go back to my scheme of selling Absolut ads on eBay again.

I was able to isolate one group that I now believe I can safely throw away: the catalogs. It's looking increasingly unlikely that I will ever send away for the perfect linen duvet cover or the oatmeal tweed crew sweater. In spite of the convenience of mail order, I still like to handle the merchandise and heft the goods.

If I can hold it in my hands, I can always divine my future with the item. I hold it and mentally step back and ask myself if I going to come to hate this thing over time? It's easy enough to answer, oddly.

No matter how shiny and wonderful the item, it's instructive to picture it bent and battered and still in my service. If I think I can live with its disintegration, then I will have no buyer's regret. If it's wilted, will I still want it?

My mother has an even more stringent method of deciding about a potential purchase. She has always said that the question you should be asking yourself before you lay out good money for an item is not "Do I really need this thing," but rather "Can I live without it?" Be honest, if only in the dark closet of your soul. If the answer is yes -- walk away.

This methodology works equally well, I might add, when choosing a lifelong mate.