That giant sucking sound you hear is me trying to get myself up from the muck of day-to-day. It happens. Things pile up on top of other things until you move from having a carefully engineered plan to panicked crisis response. But there are other ways for it to happen – a slow, painless descent into ennui. I love that. It’s a perfect word. It even sounds like what it is.

The dead pool of summer in business has arrived and the clients have gone scarce. Some claim to be on vacation but I’ve noticed that automated out-of-office responses linger longer past that point of acceptable absence. Linger longer. I like that one too.

Not that I haven’t been keeping busy. I’ve been puttering around with images and trying to self-educate on technique while keeping any eye on the trial bundles expiration dates. But I’ve also been avoiding household repairs by watching YouTube videos on subjects like polishing your headlight lenses with toothpaste and kitchen towels. Amazingly it works. But my access to technology is crushing me. And there’s far too much technology in my house right now – 2 laptops, 1 desktop, 1 iPad, 1 Nook, and 2 Droid phones. That’s not counting the plasma display and DVR that sucks us in from night to night catching up on The Newsroom, The Killing, and The Bridge.

I’ve also discovered the mixed media draw of the smartphone I carry and have been spending my drive-time listening to public radio shows like Car Talk, Fresh Air, Leonard Lopate and the occasional Ted talks – just the audio of course. That brief period in the morning that I used to spend daydreaming, is now consumed by speeches, sermons, seminars and engine troubles.

I miss that.

I”ve got to shut the screens down for a bit and let the stew bubble and squeak and maybe come up with my own reveries and revelations.  I need to wander more. I miss that too.

pepper playroomOld Pepper goes to the mats…