On Mornings, Habits & More

According to a CNN report, X- and C-shaped plasma formations sometimes appear in the ionosphere, aka Earth’s upper atmosphere. The X variations were long believed to be the result of solar storms, volcanic activity and/or severe weather, only for astronomers to then discover them during calmer moments—alongside previously undetected C-like bubbles. The former makes sense, as they’re the logical result of disturbances from above or below, but the latter is something of a puzzle. Too, why an X? Why a C? It’s strange, right?

Such things intrigue me.

So, too, do the philosophical musings of poets figurative and literal, from Van Morrison to Wallace Stevens to James Wright to Neil Young. They, like astronomers, theoretical physicists and other scientists, strive to make sense of what often seems to be a confounding existence.

Let me back up: According to the Oxford Languages dictionary, a habit is “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.”

Each (early) morning, after the cat has nudged me out of bed with his siren-like yowls, I invariably end up here, at my desk in the office-slash-guest room-slash the cat’s kingdom. He chows down on the bed, aka his dining table, leaving crumbs here, there and everywhere. I, meanwhile, drink my first, second and third cups of coffee, check my email and social media feeds, and listen to music—usually forthcoming or recent releases, but on occasion old favorites. I visit the NBC News and CNN websites, and scour Apple News. The day’s big stories interest me, of course, but I also enjoy digging into the sites’ subsections to learn about scientific discoveries, medical breakthroughs and the like. I also check my blog stats and browse my WordPress subscription feed.

I’ve been doing variations of that specific morning, believe it or not, since the days of Prodigy (aka the early 1990s). 

In the past, I’d either leave for or, once the pandemic hit, log into work by 9am. I was laid off in March, however, so now open up Pages (the Apple equivalent of Word) and tap-tap-tap away about my topic du jour, usually a new album or single. I maintain a calendar of upcoming releases I’ve received early, with some weeks more packed than others, plus list other new releases that I may want to spotlight. When I began this blog, I often looked back—thus the tagline of “music and memories.” These days, while I do trip through spacetime and land in the past every so often, I find myself lurching forward more often than not.

Although I’ve been blogging on WordPress.com for a decade now, I wasn’t aware of the daily prompts until the month before last. (I know, I know: How is that possible?!) I spent much of yesterday morn shaping a response to the day’s question about curiosity—aka the paragraphs that open this post. I pondered whether “such things intrigue me” should stand alone. I spent even more time with what’s now the third paragraph—who to single out? (I listed Walt Whitman at one point, then swapped him out for Neil Young, and did the same jujitsu with Courtney Marie Andrews and James Wright.) My intent was to share my curiosity about science and the arts, and then somehow transition to Abbey Blackwell’s latest single, “Next Time.” That song is an existential ode about time, memory and identity that hits home for me, but I couldn’t manage to shoehorn it into the overarching “curiosity” theme. I had fun trying, mind you. I always have fun when stringing words and sentences together.

Rather than waste the effort (and hours), however, I refocused and edited the piece to be just about the song.

It’s safe to say, in other words, that writing is yet another habit. In the early ’90s, I wrote and rewrote the Great American Novel during my pre-work hours until I ultimately recognized it was neither great nor original. In the late ‘90s, after launching the original Old Grey Cat website, I penned reviews to upload once I arrived home from work. Then, throughout the 2000s, I wrote screenplays that landed in the reject piles of low-level production houses. The in-between, at the office, also included much writing, as I toiled for several TV magazines and contributed essays to a TV GUIDE-branded book, I Heart TV. 

I’ll end with this: We get together with neighbors most Saturday afternoons. We recommend movies and TV shows to one another, discuss current affairs and community goings-on, and reflect on our lives. Last week, I was asked if I felt compelled to write. My answer: Yes. I write, therefore I am. It’s a habit, hobby and, for three decades, a job that never seemed like a job. I enjoy everything about it.