My moment of internet fame coincided with a trip to the Hamptons, passing through New York both ways.  I found myself indulging in a look at paths not taken in the past, rising vaguely above me like the city skyline, towers of mysterious activity and adulthood and real jobs, the hedgerows of time closing in on me, my life like the song, "The Days of Wine and Roses."  Not necessarily a healthy proposition to dwell in the past, obviously, but a conscious thinker is inevitably aware of the thoughts in his head, even as he might not be able to control them.

The neat access point to adulthood and big cities is after college.  I chucked all that fresh opportunity away, at least I think somedays.  But was my path directed, in part, by a lack of something, a deficit of oxytocin that led to unhealthy behaviors of the sort that got me into the restaurant business. I fell into a cycle, of some form of work, stress, the seeking of quelling the stress, and the resulting depression (if not combined with an actual headache) the next morning which itself led me to write, as writing is an attempt to get the good chemistry flowing in the brain if not simply the reflection of some kind of dopamine imbalance.  I felt like I'd fallen into a vicious cycle, that made health hard to come by, as if there were some kind of powerlessness about getting out of such a routine.  Healthy things like yoga and calming aerobic exercise, those always help.  They improve self-confidence.

But the lacking of good chemistry led to the background of the book I wrote, about a self-perpetuating situation, an unintentional misunderstanding that did not get addressed, two young people almost comically denying each other the oxytocin of a good friendly meaningful hug.  The writing, the effort to understand, work on that which I have a psychological issue over, led to the work I do.  But writing about it didn't seem to really help.  It didn't solve anything.  Like other parts of my professional life, it revealed a lack of a plan where everyone else in the world does have a plan.  Who could blame me for trying to find through my own readings that maybe there is a way out of such a mess, related to its initial causes, for whom no one is to blame but the chemistry of the creature.

In the end, the final analysis, I hope one writes not so much to whine, but to, perhaps in some crude and unprofessional way, to share.