-- Wednesday, March 29, 2000 --

6:44 p.m. I've decided to try to hide in plain sight until this whole thing blows over. Pretend I don't know nuttin, haven't seen hide nor hare; nobody here but us grapes.

Many, many thanks to all the kind folks who sent me encouraging emails, some with their own horror stories to relate. It's amazing how many graphic art and editing professionals there are out there, laboring in the fields. Bad things can happen to good pages -- with distressing regularity, I can't help but note.

The big boss is out of town until next Monday ... there's been much whistling and tippy-toeing going on around the office, I'll wager. What do I know? I know nuttin.

An especially poignant bit of email further elaborates the funny feelings I was having yesterday -- feeling gloomy because my brief moment in the sun has so quickly turned into a downpour. Too much pride.

Before spring becomes beautiful, it is ugly, nothing but mud and muck. I love the fact that the word humus -- the decayed vegetable matter that feeds plants -- comes from the same root that gives rise to the word humility. It helps me understand that the humiliating events of life, the events that leave "mud on my face" or that "make my name mud," may create the fertile soil in which something new can grow. -- Parker J. Palmer: Let Your Life Speak (Jossey-Bass/John Wiley).

True words. And thanks, Kelli, for sending them -- now hurry up with that web site so I can link to you!

I was raised on the idea that you should never praise yourself, or push yourself, or build yourself up. Sit at the bottom of the table and if the Host thinks you're worthy, He will ask you to move up. Or, in the language of the movies: "If you build it, they will come."

You can't get in too much trouble if you adopt these attitudes. On the other hand, it's an insane position to maintain in the go-go pitch-crazy promote-yourself-or-go-hungry Hollywood world I work in -- but it's ultimately calmer and saner. Yeah, maybe you get a little bitter when an unworthy loudmouth trumpets his meager talents and they trample over you to shake his hand, but ...

... but once you close that door and turn on the desk lamp, all you really want to hear is the still, small sound of your pen scratching against the granite rock face of the word.

It is from such scratchings that our future is built.

I know that. I just have to remember it.

I have to remember how much I enjoy what I do.

How I don't do it for the money.

Or the praise.

But because I really, really, really love books.

Even jumbled-up ones.