I don’t tend to take a computer with me when travelling for business. My most pressing task when I’m out of the office – unless working to a tight deadline for a project – is keeping on top of emails. This can usually be accomplished on an iPhone. However, the main reason I don’t travel with a computer or even an iPad (most of the time) is one to which a lot of people can probably relate. The idea of going through airport security with both a carry-on and a computer bag, and having to remove the computer to be x-rayed while fumbling around with getting things out of my pockets fills me with dread.

As a result of this concern, my bag from a recent trip to Melbourne is stuffed with complementary Sofitel writing pads. On these pages are notes and not fully-formed essays so it may take a while for the ideas to see the light of day here. In high school, I would always draft an assignment with paper and pen. The computer was essentially nothing more than a word processor. That’s if it was used at all. This was at a time during the transition from writing an essay with paper and pen to typing it (and probably writing the whole thing) on the computer. As with most things I do, there was a modicum of method to this madness. Often by the time I got to the third paragraph of an Ancient History essay, I had run out of things to say. With pen and paper, you could be creative with spacing and make it look a bit more robust than it actually was. These days my process for writing is different. While I can write notes or parts of paragraphs on paper, I really need a computer for the wonderful switching around and editing of paragraphs. It’s a bit sad, really; if I were to write someone a letter by hand for the personal touch, I’d probably have to type it before I wrote it out.

My travel worry is not all bad. Anxiety can be a motivator, and I think that I’m a very good passenger. My phone and wallet are out of my pockets before I even reach security and everything is neatly contained in a moderately-sized bag. When a group of friends and I travelled the U.S., shoes, belts and jackets were off with lightning speed. If you took us all out for a night on the town with the only thing on your mind to get us out of our clothes, we’d be a very cheap date. I’m reminded of how a sleep-deprived Jimmy Wayne, the country singer and all-round good guy, misunderstood a security-officer’s instructions once and ended up handcuffed in his boxer shorts. I’m sure that even my preference for an aisle seat began because I wanted to be close enough to the overhead baggage locker when the plane landed. That’s if I wanted to live on the edge and not use the much safer option of under the seat in front of me.

My friend Paul probably wouldn’t understand why I’d avoid taking an iPad on board stocked with the latest shows, particularly for long flights. But I’m usually content with a book and the in-flight entertainment. On a flight back from Singapore, I watched back-to-back episodes of the then-new Dallas. Putting fingers to keyboard today, I was originally going to write that I watched them on my way to Dallas, Texas. But I realized that I’m just fusing my memories of going through the airport in Dallas and seeing many men with the “ten-gallon” cowboy hats with watching the wonderful Larry Hagman on TV. I’d imagine he would tell me that “that’s an understandable cognitive error, darlin’.”

This update is also an attempt for me to make sure that I continue to post regularly. Conducting and writing up interviews is very much an ebb and flow business. Sometimes, I’ve got back-to-back interviews and am deep in research for more with little actual output to put here. My friend Mark would admonish me for not posting more regularly in the last couple of months. When I started the blog almost a year ago, he advised that to get people to come back, there’d have to be regular content. Admonish is probably too strong a word and I can’t imagine he’d admonish me. If I did suggest to him that he was being hard on me, he’d ask me over our regular Negroni (it’s Negronis this season), “Are you projecting?” I hate when he’s right. I’m being hard on myself. That being said, I’m happy to say in the next few days there will be an interview here with Kellie Flanagan, an actress on The Ghost & Mrs. Muir when she was a child and now a writer. But do be sure to stop by regularly here; in fact, you can subscribe so you never miss a post. Brendan O’Brien has a web page for his late father, Edmond, and I love a quote on that site: “Love is many visits”. I will be more direct: Y’all come back now, y’hear?

The title of this update post doesn’t really reflect what I’m writing about, but serves two purposes. The first is that the other day I was walking around the garden. To my astonishment, flowers were all of a sudden blooming, there were blossoms on the trees, and the grapevine was covered with green leaves. Mercifully there were not yet grapes to step on. After thinking winter would never end, it finally has. The second reason is when I look over the ‘Updates’ I’ve posted during the last year, there is a lot of weather talk. I’m just trying to be consistent. But you would prefer me making small talk about the weather, rather than that local sporting team. Right?