Every morning, I sit at the same desk I sat at during my teen years and tap-tap-tap away on my MacBook Pro’s keyboard. My dad procured the bulky slab of wood and the metal drawers beneath it from his office, for free, in the late 1970s when his company upgraded the workplace’s furniture. The first stirrings of what would become a lifelong passion, writing, began here—first on lined notebook paper and then the onion skin-thin erasable typing paper I used in my portable typewriter. I wrote for school, I wrote for fun. I jotted thoughts in my desk diaries and even kept a journal of sorts for a time.
When I moved away, the desk stayed put. The writing, however, continued—both for fun and profit. The former includes the original Old Grey Cat website and Da Boot fanzine, while the former encompasses most of my professional life.
In 2014, Diane and I moved into my childhood home, which had become too much for my aging mother—by then a widow—to handle; the desk, along with much of the other furniture, came with it. I re-launched The Old Grey Cat in 2014 sitting at it. Every post since has been written here.
We moved twice in the years that followed—in 2018 and ‘23. Unlike before, however, the desk came with us. It serves as a daily reminder not just of my long-ago self, but of my dreams and aspirations, and how I found joy from stringing words and sentences into a coherent whole. All of which is to say, writing was, is and will always be my favorite hobby and pastime. That I primarily focus on another favorite pastime, music, makes it a doubly grand endeavor.
The Old Grey Cat 
That desk and chair is the highlight. It looks so sturdy. I’m sure pretty great ideas were birthed at that site
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