This excerpt is me: Salon.com Life | One is (not) the loneliest number.
I must buy this book and read it.

I’m posting something lest anyone thing I have died. I am in fact quite alive. The CS Lewis novel title I quoted has little to do with the book and just something I thought appropriate, since I’ve felt for the last 6-8 weeks like I have indeed been on another planet. The planet called “too busy and distracted to remember I even /have/ a frickin blog.” I am now trying to get my ducks in a row to go to the IA Summit, and trying to get an article written for Digital-Web magazine, and trying to help that magazine with its IA (though I’m not being very helpful I’m afraid, only taking the occasional potshot), and then there’s my actual /job/ that pays me, and my clients there, and of course my loving family without whom none of this would be worth a damn.
Now, the thing is that I have been thinking about stuff that would be fine on the blog, but just haven’t managed to squish it from my brain to my fingers. Or even my mouth most of the time, which will shock those of you who have met me. One problem is that I turned 35 in December, and for some reason that particular pair of digits has led me to do a lot of ruminating before, during, and after the actual birthday. Why did I get all worked up over 35 and was fine with turning 30? 35 is halfway to 70. Nuff said.
Here area a few of the things I’ve thought about:
1. If I could create a simple automatic way for people’s socks to stay together before, during, and after the wash, I’d be a billionaire.
2. People shouldn’t sell Leopard Gecko’s when they’re too young, because kids like my daughter will get really sad when they die from being too little and unhardy for anything but professional care.
3. Stuff that I once thought was too weird for words is suddenly looking like opportunities I missed as a 20-something, and that I wonder if I should explore as a second-half-30-something. What stuff? Well, stuff like horror fan conventions, or nude skydiving. Or nude horror fans skydiving. I don’t know actually, which is part of the problem.
4. Information Architecture is my job. It is not my life. I am tired of thinking about it every day all day as work, play and dream material. This will make me fall far behind many of my more obsessed and disciplined colleagues. So be it. I’m gonna write a horror novel about nude skydiving conventions.
5. I can’t ever end a list on an even number. I think I’m prejudiced against them.

There. Any comments?

There is a big squishy pile of obsessions on my mind right now and no way to sort it out besides grabbing one slippery tendril and starting to pull.
A week ago I saw these guys live. It got me back in touch with a lot of thoughts, dreams and wonder that I had as a twenty-something…
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Not much to say here other than to recommend this article from yesterday: Death as a Constant Companion.

Like everybody else, I’m grieving. Even though 9/11/2001 wasn’t at all about me, and didn’t do any harm to me personally, here I am thinking about where I was that day, what was on my mind, how my experience felt. I really hope that’s just a human response, because otherwise it would feel profoundly selfish.

The part that I have trouble shaking is the fact that I was on a plane that morning, but my plane was headed to Atlanta from Greensboro. It landed minutes before the first plane in NY hit.
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