#EDIT: my wife (immediately): 'what kind of play has six acts' listen is there a better way to separate a chunk into smaller chunks

[corvuscorona]

SHADOW MONSTER - an Astos playlist

...for when you need to spend about an hour rotating that guy in your mind at top speed, or at least a little faster than chillout speed.

(YouTube playlist here) • (tracklist etc. below the cut)

Needed a playlist I could Think About Astos To while doing chores or whatever & it turned out I had the ammunition I needed to be kinda picky, so I'm sharing it here with all my comrades-in-Astos-scholarship, too! You know, in case you also need some music to Think About Astos To. Which seems possible-to-likely, I think.

I have only included tracks that are reasonably well balanced for Normal Listening (just please forgive me for the PS2 synth horns in "finish the promise" if you can find it in your heart). Also, if you use the YT playlist, Man Human is shorter than it should be, so listen to it twice if you want.

ACT I: IMPETUS

Creep City • Jake Shears I said I'd hang on for the ride / now I'm hanging on for dear life / …is that a real knife? バケモノ信者 (Bakemono Shinja / Monster Believer) • MAIKI-P 人の顔した　バケモノさ / 気づけば僕も　バケモノさ • hito no kao shita bakemono sa / kizukeba boku mo bakemono sa it's a monster with a human face / and now that I think about it, I'm a monster, too 心臓 (Shinzō / Heart[1]) • TOOBOE 蘇ってしまうよ　貴方の為なら幾らでも / 間違いも愛せるよ　馬鹿なもんでさ / 生き返ってしまうよ　貴方がくれた命だから • yomigaette shimau yo anata no tame nara ikura demo / machigai mo aiseru yo baka na monde sa / ikikaette shimau yo anata ga kureta inochidakara for you, I'd revive again and again / loving even the mistakes, fool that I am / I'll come back to life because it's the life you gave me

ACT II: THE PROCESS

Bleed it Out • Linkin Park half the words don't mean a thing / and I know that I won't be satisfied Man Human • Denki Groove for Devilman Crybaby Just One Yesterday • Fall Out Boy I want to teach you a lesson in the worst kind of way / still, I'd trade all my tomorrows…

ACT III: MADNESS

Décolleté • Kenshi Yonezu 兎角疲れました / 数えるから直ぐに消えて • tokaku tsukaremashita / kazoeru kara sugu ni kiete at any rate, I'm exhausted / I'll count, so hurry up and disappear [2] うみなおし (Uminaoshi / Rebirth[3]) • Maretu 君は何も悪くないぜ / (多分) • kimi wa nani mo warukunai ze / (tabun) you've done nothing wrong / (probably) 空想メソロギヰ (Kuusou Mesorogiwi / Fantastical Mesology) • Yousei Teikoku for Future Diary (See [4] below.)

ACT IV: FOR WHAT

A Good Song Never Dies • Saint Motel it just reminds you of where you were / the first time it made you cry / the first time you felt alive… SHADOW MONSTER • Toki Asako 探しものは踊らなきゃ見つからない • sagashimono wa odoranakya mitsukaranai if we don't dance, we won't find what we're looking for.

ACT V: RESOLVE

JUMPER • CAPSULE anger stress and secrets they won't break you wake up put aside you(')r(e) feeling nothing freely speed up landing stepping jumping jump Leave The Light On • Overcoats what if I don't make it home / you're not there, and the light's not on

ACT VI: THE END

still feel. • half•alive when it's hopeless, I start to notice / that I still feel alive finish the promise • MOTOO FUJIWARA for Tales of the Abyss White Light • Superfly for Tales of Zestiria 正解なんてない 間違いなんてない / 塗り替えてゆけ 在るべき世界へ • seikai nante nai machigai nante nai / nurikaete yuke arubeki sekai e there's no such thing as right; there's no such thing as wrong / remake this world into what it should have been

( NOTES )

[1] - Specifically the anatomical term. Metaphorical uses of this word do seem to be a thing, but skew more towards meaning something like "courage" (think "guts" or "spine") as opposed to 心 (kokoro) on its own, which is used for something more like "essence", "spirit", "soul". Incidentally, I highly… HIGHLY recommend watching the MV for this one (Check the YT link before the readmore)! [2] - Eternal plug for vgperson, who has been my source for Kenshi Yonezu lyrics since something like 2010, and is the backbone of society. Check out the full translation there (ctrl+F the title!) to get a feel for this song's whole... vibe (which I'd describe as a very specific flavor of "fuck. god damn it. whatever; leave me alone," which of course is why it's here). [3] - There's a footnote on the Vocaloid Lyrics Wiki page for this song that conveys something interesting about the title; it says: "'Uminaoshi' isn’t a word that’s typically used to mean 'rebirth'; rather, it is a compound made up of a word meaning 'to give birth' and a word that carries the sense of doing something over to fix mistakes, because you messed it up the last time," which is fun, I think. [4] - This song's lyrics are poetic in a way that makes them difficult to interpret as-written, let alone translate in a way that makes literally any sense at all. The official MV does have English subtitles that are NOT auto-translated, though. Those are the most coherent piece of information I can give you (check the YT link before the readmore!) re: why the Future Diary OP is even in this playlist, except for this statement: it's about breaking free of a time loop that's being treated like a game in some way by The Entity In Charge Of It. (And also, it sounds like... you know, like the way that it sounds.)

[mandibierly]

‘SIX’ Season Finale Preview: Barry Sloane Looks Back at 3 Key Moments

Barry Sloane as Bear in ‘SIX’ (Credit: Kent Smith/History)

Tonight’s Season 1 finale of History’s SIX is the moment fans have been waiting for: SEAL Team 6 has finally arrived at the compound where their former leader Rip (Walton Goggins) has been kept captive alongside a Nigerian schoolteacher and her female students. As the short sneak peek below reveals, the team, now led by Barry Sloane’s Bear, does at least reach the girls…

In anticipation of the season finale (a second season will begin filming this summer), we asked Sloane to look back at three of our favorite Bear moments.

Sloane and Kyle Schmid as Caulder (Credit: History)

1. Go time. In last week’s penultimate episode, we watched Bear close his eyes and run his hands over the gear on his vest. Why? Just like real SEALS, they were encouraged to customize their set-ups. “The idea was to indicate to people that I know where it is at a second’s notice without having to think. It mirrors back to the pool scene in episode 3 with the blackout masks — just trust that everything’s within arm’s length and everything’s under control,” Sloane says. Related: ‘SIX’ Episode 7 Postmortem: Dominic Adams Talks Michael and Rip — and One of TV’s Timeliest Backstories

Once Bear completed his own prep, he shared a moment with each of his team members. Because it was a mini musical montage, we couldn’t hear what he was saying. Our real question: were the words scripted? “That was completely adlibbed,” Sloane says. “[The producers] just wanted me to engage them all. We’re so tight. They knew what connection I had to each of the team at that point, and [that I knew] what they needed to hear and what they needed to see from me as their leader at that time. It stems from the wonderful speech that Buddha [played by Juan Pablo Raba] gives to him in preparation for that — to be the guy who brings them home. Bear’s finally at peace with where he’s going, and it’s beginning to empower him again. It was a great moment after what he’d been through in episode 5 and 6, with the crisis of confidence and crisis of faith and crisis of humanity. It’s nice to see Bear starting to get his back up again, ready to fight.”

(Credit: History)

It was also nice to see Bear and Caulder share those sweet smiles after the knock-down, drag-out fight they had in the water in episode 6. “Nothing we did during filming was remotely as dangerous [as that],” Sloane says. But it was a lot of fun, too. “When we filmed that scene, after we had the beatdown, we both broke down laughing and came together and you could see that they resolved it. However, in the edits, they decided to drag that out a little further. So it was important that we had that moment in episode 7 where you see that they’ve got past that s–t,” he says.

The two are kind of each other’s archnemesis, he says. “But they’ve each got qualities that the other doesn’t. They kind of make one decent person,” he adds, with a laugh. “If you put them together, you get a pretty good human, I think. As they are, there’s a lot of holes.”

Related: ‘SIX’ Episode 6 Postmortem: Edwin Hodge Talks Chase’s Backstory, #BlackRiflesMatter Patch

Sloane and Brianne Davis, as Bear’s wife, Lena (Credit: History)

2. Bear overshares. As the season has progressed, Bear’s marriage to Lena (Brianna Davis) has grown more and more strained. In episode 7, as they placed new flowers at their baby’s grave, she told him she didn’t think they should try again for kids. But it’s the scene in episode 6, when Bear told Lena about a raid that hadn’t gone according to plan — how he’d had to shoot a woman and drag a child past three dead bodies — that sticks with us. She told him she knows it’s what he has to do to protect “us,” meaning Americans, but immediately, he says he shouldn’t have told her and leaves. She’s left alone to cry.

(Credit: History)

“I think it’s the sadness of knowing that someone has pulled away from, and the sad realization that they may almost be beyond repair,” Sloane says. “That’s the first time he’s ever opened up, so she knows he’s in a bad way. To put that weight on his wife is not something he’s ever done before. He’s absolutely at his wits end to offer her information about what he’d done. The fact that he closes the door, he’s basically just reinforced that door with 50, 60 locks. It’s like she knows there’s probably no way back in there now. It was a tough scene to play, because I didn’t want it to come across as petulant, but I wanted it to be something he used as a weapon at first. ‘Okay, if you’re gonna keep pushing, if you’re gonna keep asking me what’s wrong, then please have a little of my weight for a second.’ And then as soon as it’s leaving his mouth, he realizes that that’s not the man he is and that’s not anything he would like to give to his wife. He’s almost regretting it as he’s saying it. It was a wonderful scene.”

Related: History’s SIX: 5 Things to Know About the Navy SEAL Drama Starring Walton Goggins

(Credit: History)

3. The heart-to-heart with fallen SEAL Buck’s father (guest star Eric Pierpoint). Sloane played the scene beautifully, fighting to keep the tears from falling from his eyes. “Connecting to him at the time, his performance was so great, I really just had to listen. Sometimes acting is as simple as that,” Sloane says. “We’d all got so close to [Donny Boaz, who played Buck], that when the time came, god rest Buck’s soul, we were all feeling it anyway. We were sad he wasn’t there. [Eric] also reminded me a lot of my grandfather, who passed in the year 2000, and that was kind of swimming around in there as well, as sick psychotic actors do,” he says with another laugh. “I knew I just needed to slip on that pain for a little longer, and the skill was just making sure that I kept a lid on the pan.”

The Season 1 finale of SIX airs March 8 at 10 p.m. on History.

[tortuga-aak]

'The Walking Dead' actor talks the season 8 premiere: Dwight 'has to make some high-stake decisions'

Gene Page/AMC

Warning: There are spoilers ahead if you have not watched "The Walking Dead" season 8 premiere.

"The Walking Dead" season eight premiere kicked off Sunday night, and the season wasted little time with Rick, Maggie, and Ezekiel bringing their communities to go to war with the bat-wielding Negan. 

One of the main players in this "All Out War" is Dwight (Austin Amelio), one of Negan's high-ranking Saviors, who appeared to switch sides at the end of season seven. Right now, he's working undercover for Rick, Daryl, and the gang to give them the inside scoop on the Sanctuary. 

INSIDER spoke with Amelio about his allegiances in the war this season, what he thinks of Rick as a leader, and how his relationship with frenemy Eugene may fare this season now that Dwight's working for the other side. 

Kirsten Acuna: There are so many great little interactions in the episode. One of the moments that got to me was seeing you and Daryl interacting via arrow notes. You guys were like pen pals.

AMC

Austin Amelio: [Laughing] Yeah, old classic pen pals relationship.

Acuna: It seems like Daryl doesn’t totally trust Dwight. After Daryl grabbed the arrow from you he didn’t give a little nod, like the ones he’ll give to Rick or an ally. It seems like you guys maybe still have a little ways to go.

Amelio: Yeah, I’d say we do.

Acuna: Maybe for those dog food sandwiches that Dwight was feeding him in season seven.

Gene Page/AMC

Amelio: Yeah, I mean that’s the thing with his relationship. In season seven, [Daryl] comes in and he gets a little bit of an understanding of my world and [sees] kind of what I’m fighting for and what I'm going through. But we’re also on two different sides of the spectrum and it's going to take a while to bridge that gap. It’s not going to happen right off the bat.

Acuna: Of course. I want to go back to the season seven finale real quick. Dwight left Daryl a little note on a sculpture. How did Dwight know someone would find that chess piece he left behind? And, of all people to find it, it was Daryl. Was he banking on that?

AMC

Amelio: I think Daryl got a glimpse into his room in season seven or actually when I came on in season six [Daryl] knows that’s like one of the first things we introduce — the little chess piece.

He was banking on that. I think it was a very smart move on Dwight’s part. I don’t know how Daryl ended up finding that. You know, some movie magic involved there. That’s kind of the beauty of that.

Acuna: Their relationship, as you said, it goes back to those chess pieces. One of their first interactions, I think Daryl says to Dwight, "What is that thing there? Give it to me." And you explained that you carved those with your grandfather. It totally made sense why you left that behind. At the end of the day, I guess it’s Dwight hoping that Daryl would be the one to find it.

AMC

Amelio: No one else would catch on to that. If it came across to Rick or anyone else, they’d just f---ing toss it. There's got to be some sort of chance that Daryl walks past that and notices it.

Acuna: Yeah, it was a sweet moment in the season seven finale to see. Going back to the season eight premiere, it seems pretty safe to say that Dwight is Team Rick or at least team Daryl at this point. From my understanding in the episode, you gave Daryl a note with the locations of Negan’s men to take out. Or am I wrong?

Amelio: It’s a good assumption. I like that.

Acuna: OK. So when Rick show’s up at the Sanctuary and Negan asks what he can do for Rick, he immediately yells out Dwight’s name. For a split second while watching the episode, I thought Rick was going to sell you out. Did you have that feeling at all either while reading the script or …

Amelio: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. For that split second, my heart sank. And that's how, I think, they wanted it to play, where it’s like, 'DWIGHT!' And then it’s like, 'Oh, f---.' But then all of a sudden [Rick] moves on. I love that part.

Gene Page/AMC

Acuna: And Rick, he's very aggressive in this episode when it comes to the Saviors. He’s not taking any crap. He’s interrupting Negan. Dwight’s really never seen Rick in full-on Ricktatorship mode — ripping people’s throats out and stuff — what is it like for Dwight to see Rick in action here as opposed to him pretty much being the opposite in the season seven premiere?

Amelio: Dwight’s sort of assessing the whole situation out. Where we left off in season seven, he’s going back and forth. He’s really wearing his heart on his sleeve and he’s … I don't want to give anything away, but he has to make some high-stake decisions.

It’s definitely weighing on Dwight to see this sort of leader take charge and stand up for his group. It’s definitely something Dwight is putting on the backburner in his mind and considering. I think it's going to help him further his decision-making process, if that makes any sense.

Gene Page/AMC

Acuna: Yeah. Also, you’re seeing two different leadership styles. Is Dwight questioning at all whether or not Rick may be a little crazy or as crazy as Negan? 

Amelio: Crazy in this world ... There are so many things involved. I don’t even know where to start off. [Dwight’s] taking everything in. He has some really, really interesting decision-making that he has to do to figure out what he’s going to do.

Dwight, he said at the end of season seven that he hates Negan. He hates him. So, it's good to see another leader and see what they’re about.

Gene Page/AMC

Acuna: Well, when we last spoke you said Dwight was kind of putting — to mention the chess pieces again — he was putting his chess pieces in place to come up with some bigger plan to help take Negan out at some point.

Amelio: Yup.

Acuna: Now, Rick’s plan doesn’t totally go according to plan. Negan gets away or Rick let’s him get away. I have to imagine Dwight isn’t too pleased because Negan’s still alive. Isn’t Dwight at all concerned that Negan may suspect him of spying or double-crossing? Dwight’s not looking for that iron to the other half of his face.

Amelio: [Laughter] No, no. I mean, yeah, in this season you see him [Dwight] put everything on the line. He’s fighting out of love for his wife and hate for Negan. When you put those two together, you’re going to make some seriously crazy decisions and hope that he [Dwight] goes for the best.

Acuna: I was thinking, even if Negan does find out Dwight is working with Rick, or if Negan suspects him at all, would Dwight throw someone else under the bus to save his own skin?

Amelio: He’s got a backup plan. No doubt about that.

Acuna: Dwight did feel bad about getting Dr. Carson getting tossed into the oven though last season.

Gene Page/AMC

Amelio: Yeah, I mean of course. None of that stuff goes without some sort of human emotion. You’re not just completely numb to it even though you’re in that world unless you’re an absolute monster and I don’t think Dwight is.

Acuna: I don't think so either. You’re helping Rick and the group try to take out Negan.

Amelio: Considering who’s sticking to their values and their morals and trying to be honest? Dwight kind of covers all of that. He really wants to do well. He's just stuck in a sh---y spot.

Acuna: Exactly. The decisions everyone has made on the show has brought them to the points they're at now. I want to ask a little bit about Eugene. Does Dwight know or suspect that Eugene had anything to do with Sasha becoming a walker? Or does he even care?

AMC

Amelio: No, I don’t think he knows that. That was it’s own circumstance and situation. There’s so much going on, but I think he definitely suspects … Their whole relationship is sort of walking on eggshells around each other. Suspect? Sure. They do suspect each other of something, for sure.

Can we be advantageous for each other for something? That’s really Dwight and Eugene's relationship wrapped up. What the f--- can I use this guy for? Dwight knows he’s smart. He’s coming in, he’s already making moves. He’s calling shots. I’ve been through a lot of sh-- in order to get where I’m at — climbing the ladder. Here he is just already up there with me. I think Dwight has a problem with that, you know?

Acuna: Yeah. Eugene seems super comfortable listening to the song Easy Street. In contrast, Daryl’s like, get that away from me.

Amelio: Right, right. I loved how they used it. It's kind of a double meaning. [Eugene] kind of uses it to get pumped up or amped. To me, that song is just absolutely tortuous. It was part of something [Dwight] didn’t want to do. Daryl had to listen to that song. I love the way they use it. It’s really interesting.

Acuna: And now everyone knows that song. On the flip side, does Eugene know you’re helping out Rick? You mentioned that he’s smart. Maybe that’s something down the line we’ll see play out in the season.

Gene Page/AMC

Amelio: Yeah, I can’t answer any of that, but he would be the first one to sniff it out. I think.

Acuna: I absolutely agree.

Amelio: He definitely puts things together really quickly and he is around me a bunch. We’re in the same vicinity a lot so, yeah, we’ll see what happens.

Acuna: We see a few new characters interact for the first time in this episode like Enid and Jerry. Are there any characters Dwight hasn’t met yet that he would like to interact with?

Amelio: It would be nice to interact with Carol.

Acuna: Why’s that?

Amelio: Just because I haven’t yet and I like Melissa [McBride] as a person. I want to act with her. She’s kind of a lone wolf as well. I feel like they may have something to say to each other.

Gene Page/AMC

Acuna: I think that they definitely have some stuff in common with losing people they love, but I don’t know how Daryl would feel about that.

Amelio: Yeah, he’d probably get a little mad. But that’s all right.

This interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.

You can follow along with all of our coverage of "The Walking Dead" here.

NOW WATCH: The latest 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' trailer is here and it looks epic

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[raystart]

In Praise of the Home Office

Early on a Sunday morning I’m sitting in my favorite space, a small outbuilding behind my house, in my favorite chair, a twenty-five year-old, medium-sized Aeron with a few small burn holes in the mesh seat. Even though it’s spring, it’s still cool outside. I’ve got my hoody pulled over my head, keeping the ole brainpan warm. I have nowhere to be but here. The red second hand of the school room clock mounted high on the wall ticks audibly, counting off the progression of moments, every one of which belongs to me.

Through the several windows I can see that the sun has begun to burn through the layer of clouds, revealing a patch of light blue sky—I’ll leave the exact color to my visual artist friends; to me it is reminiscent of the powder paint we used for skies in elementary school. A plane streaks overhead, gleaming and metallic, rumbling through the atmosphere like thunder. In the middle distance, a red-tail hawk circles, searching the canyon for breakfast; hummingbirds hover and dart, flirting and issuing their odd squeaks. A breeze plays through my neighbor’s invasive stand of tall bamboo. The stalks sway and knock together, making woody sounds like a marimba. From over the hill I can hear the throaty engines of powerboats and other personal watercraft churning circles around nearby bay, weekend warriors at play.

Here in my home office, the line between pleasure and duty is blurred. Weekend or weekday, there is no difference to me. Nobody counts my hours. My work is also my hobby. It takes as long as it takes. That someone is or is not paying me at any particular time is sort of secondary. Like most people, I work to live. But I also live to work.

This is where I do it—a 900-square foot patch of universe chock-a-block with photos, keepsakes, books and other familiar objects of personal history, most of it qualified as tax deductible, all of it mine to command.

Like nowhere else, when I am here I know who I am.  

***

Now it’s a little after noon. I’ve just returned from the house, where I threw together leftovers for my typical 15-minute lunch. Afterwards, I folded the whites and stuck the darks in to the dryer.

When I think about it, I come from a tradition of home offices. Both of my grandfathers—a lawyer and the owner of a clothing and shoe store—had offices in their homes, satellites to their more traditional workplaces. I remember being a little boy and swiveling around in their desk chairs, hunt-and-pecking on their clunky antique typewriters. In part I believe I owe my love of writing to the happiness of these times, my unexplainable attraction to the physical act of typing—the wonderful rachet-sound of the platen, the percussive clack of the keys against 20-pound bond, the ding at the end of each line heralding the need for the cleansing physical action of the carriage return. To type is to have the world at your fingertips—twenty-six neutral symbols to endlessly recombine. It is a task that requires both whimsy and precision. Another universe to command.

My father was an OBGYN. He had a home office, strictly for paperwork, in the basement of our rancher, the only place in the house he was allowed to smoke his cigars. The centerpiece of my dad’s home office was a desk his parents bought him for use in medical school—a blonde mahogany, Midcentury Modern kneehole desk with curved drawers by Heywood Wakefield, according to my research on the web. There is a matching Tambour door cabinet, on the back of which is stamped the manufacture date, May 1, 1954, two years before my birth. (The desk is too heavy to move.) As a boy I remember stealing down to the office when my parents were out for the evening. In the deep, double-drawer on the left side of the desk, my dad kept a stash of racy gag gifts given to him by friends—an oversize toothbrush with two plastic breasts instead of bristles, a windup penis with feet, a deck of cards with naked ladies instead of kings and queens.

When I went law school, my Dad gave me the desk and the hutch, for both practical and symbolic reasons. Hopefully, he said, it would see me through grad school with the same kind of success as he.

Of course, law school only lasted three weeks, but I was allowed to keep the furniture, which has traveled with me through forty years of home office incarnations. In Arlington Virginia, the desk was in the second bedroom of an apartment situated just beneath the flight path to what was then called National Airport—the entire building would shake. In Washington D.C., I lived in a basement apartment, and then in a loft, and then in a townhouse, the last for 12 years. My office was on the third floor; the desk had a nook within the front bay window, which looked out on the cityscape of a still-untamed section of town (in present times the Theater District), where hookers and crack dealers worked the dark corners, a different kind of natural show playing at all hours of the day and night.

Now my father’s desk has outlived him. For the past twenty years it’s been in this room, in San Diego, at the bottom-left corner of the continental United States, twenty-five miles north of the Mexican Border. The deep drawer is now full of vintage reporter’s equipment—defunct tape recorders, film cameras, old pads and other office supplies, not nearly so much fun as the booby toothbrush and other naughty bits of yore. In the hutch I have a ton of tear sheets from my years as a newspaper reporter and a few copies of the literary magazines I edited in college. I still remember sliding it open one time and finding multiple copies of a sex manual my father must have given out to patients. The authors were a husband and wife team. The photos were black and white. Naked, and without expression, the authors demonstrated dozens of positions, a sort of humorless kama sutra for the Masters and Johnson set.

In order to better accommodate the various pieces of hardware associated with today’s modern office, I have since added around the desk an eclectic mix of work tables and equipment stands, so that I’m nearly surrounded with surfaces—imagine a closeout sale in the office furniture department at Staples and you get the idea. (My original typing table, which used to hold a used, IBM Selectric typewriter, now holds the laser printer.) Swiveling around,  rolling my chair (over a plastic floor mat), I can attend to the different tasks and projects I have going simultaneously. Sometimes I imagine myself sitting in the command pod of a space ship, all the controls of my great solo enterprise at my fingertips—look at that, another reference to control.

Clearly a theme is emerging here. I am my own man, yes. But that also makes me nobody else’s man. Responsible to, and responsible for, only myself. Powerful and powerless at once.   

***

Nighttime now. These things take time, another reason I suppose I’ve spent so much time in my home office. The sky is dark. Stars have appeared. Somewhere across the canyon an owl is hooting. If I listen carefully I can hear the waves break quietly on the coastline, a half mile away.

After making myself a simple dinner of steak and greens, I’ve put up the dishes and returned the fifty or so steps to my office. Yesterday, I left the house to go to the post office. Today I didn’t leave the house at all; most of my time was spent in this chair. And yes, I am still wearing the sweatpants I put on this morning when I rolled out of bed. I will make sure to shower at the night’s end. I’m a home-based worker but I’m no misanthrope.

For the last few minutes, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tally the number of hours I’ve spent in proximity to this desk, alone in a room with my thoughts and labors. With all the travel for work it’s hard to say, though I also know that for every week in the field doing research, I’ve generally spent several more weeks at my desk—making calls and arrangements, transcribing, doing further research, composing, rewriting and editing.

Struggling to find the right formula, I went to the doorway and looked into the darkness, in the direction of the hooting. One hot summer evening the owl had overflown me by only a foot or two—the whoosh was palpable in the immediate airspace and kind of freaked me out.

Standing there, I noticed one of the many photos of my son. A decade ago, he was working hard to become a point guard on the middle school basketball team. At an age where many boys dream of becoming pro athletes, he had a Lakers jersey with his name—SAGER—custom printed on the back. He was taking extra practices, working out with a coach, running several miles every day.

One afternoon when he was off at practice, I was sitting here in my home office, thinking I wished I could do something to help. One thing you (hopefully) learn as a parent—the kid has to take the all the practice shots and do all the math problems himself. You can’t do it for him. All you can really do is cheer them on.

In that instant, an idea came to me. I walked over to the desk and picked up a pen. I wrote it like this:

  Hard work

Well enjoyed

Builds a man

Makes a life

Day by day

  Though I wrote this with myself and my son in mind, the same can be said for building a woman as well.

It’s what I’ve learned after forty years of sitting in my home office, doing what I love.