At work, all those little “keeping up” tasks would stay un-kept-up, desks would remain cluttered, co-workers would stay ungreeted. At home, the carpets would remain unvacuumed, the shelves undusted, the kitchen untidied. Without procrastination, where would we be?

It’s been far too long since I’ve written, and for that I’m sorry. But I’m not good at thinking of things to write. If topics don’t jump up and yell “write about me!” I’m pretty much powerless to conjure them.

But April is National Poetry Month, so I thought I’d reproduce a poem I wrote long ago. It’s not an April poem. It’s a February poem. But with all the untimely snow we’ve had lately, I thought it might still be strangely appropriate.

So, just as I was getting used to walking to get my coffee several times a week, I learn that the coffee shop has closed! Talk about too horrible to be fiction, though. the shop closed because…

• the two owners are getting divorced
• one of the owners just had bypass surgery
• the owners’ kid is struggling with “chemical dependency issues”
• and one of the owners is having a difficult bought in the midst of a lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression (couldn’t imagine what might have brought that on!)

Yikes! You can’t make this stuff up. And just when I was feeling sorry for myself that my coffee shop was closing, too. Now I feel rotten for feeling sorry for myself.

Luckily for me (though it doesn’t do too much to alleviate these people’s personal hell), the shop is slated to open again sometime in the next month, maybe even in two weeks if all goes perfectly.

Life lesson #1: Peer pressure really does work. How could I not watch a show that makes the local news, the national news, and even NPR? How could I not watch the show that gets dissected in the break room at least once a week? I couldn’t let a little thing like being scheduled to work during it’s scheduled broadcast time stop me. Oh no. So not only have I started watching the show I swore I’d never watch… I’ve started taping it. That’s right. American Idol auditions… on tape. How sad is that.

Life lesson #2: Never stake your life’s worth on a singing audition, no matter how good your mother thinks you are.

Life lesson #3: There’s memorable… and then there’s memorable. Don’t go for memorable for it’s own sake.

That is all.

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