I Am Danny Zuko

Remember the scene at the end of Grease when Danny Zuko shows up at the carnival in a letterman's sweater and the T-birds say to him, "Where did you swipe the letterman's sweater?" and Danny replies, "While you were out stealing hubcaps, I lettered in track." The T-birds are stunned and Danny is proud and then everything works out really well for Danny because Sandy shows up wearing skintight pants and a leather jacket and smoking a cigarette and then dances with Danny in the Sugar Shack. I want to be Danny Zuko. I know you're thinking that I just want to be the one to peel the leather off Sandy and, while I did want to do that very thing when I first saw that scene in my youth, I'm not talking about that right now. No, I want to show up at work someday in my letterman's sweater and say, "While you were all mired in bureacracy, I wrote two books." And then dance sing and dance and take off in my flying car.

Working full-time and parenting full-time and writing full-time is a lot of full-time. It turns out that it's hard to write a book, especially when you are more like the T-Birds than you'd like to admit. The past several months of the Loft Foreword program have been confusing and humbling and, to be honest, I'm a little lost. The more I write the more I seem to lose my place. I know that part of this is that I haven't been blogging as much and blogging is what helped me develop my narrative voice in the first place. I want to blog but I'm busy stealing hubcaps and running track.

So, what am I to do? What do you do center yourself? How do you find your way when you're lost? I have to figure this out or I'm going to show up at the carnival as Putzie rather than Danny and I can't live with that because you know I want to be a stud.