Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

“You can’t out train a lousy diet.”–Greg Glassman.

To entertain both a long and a healthy life one must address how we go about fueling said life. Ya gotta eat. It’s WHAT you choose to eat, and let’s face it, HOW MUCH you eat that determines the effect of nutrition on your Healthspan. Add in at least a little bit of thought about WHEN you eat and you have the basic outline of how you can design your own personal plan for eating your way to a longer life that is freer from the ravages of chronic disease.

Or so says the guy who chose to not only have that extra glass of wine, but did so after consuming a bowl of ice cream after the stop time of my eating window had passed.

Let’s lay down some stipulations before we start. First, there is really no settled science behind any recommendations on what constitutes the one, best nutrition plan. Literally, none. This is me, giving you my distillation of my research and a view of what I am trying to do for myself and Beth. In this effort we probably represent the area under the fattest part of the curve (pretty good, huh?) of folks who live in North America. We looked at obtaining all manner of “properly” sourced foods (e.g. prairie-raised naturally fed protein sources) and found the process to like paying for the privilege of having a second job. So we shop in a grocery store and buy what is available there. We eat at home 5 or 6 days a week. There are a couple of allergies that force us to be a bit particular about recipes but don’t affect our Healthspan-driven options.

Start at the beginning: how much should you eat? Easiest answer ever…LESS! You almost certainly get more food through your pie hole than you need. Heaven knows I do. To know how much you should eat it is first necessary to know how much you are consuming now by measuring literally everything containing calories that you consume. There are any number of apps you can use (we used MyFitnessPal). Prepare to be shocked at what you find. Your 1800 calorie macro diet or 14 block Zone more than likely only represents 75% or less of your actual consumption. Knowledge is power; you need to know the baseline.

Eat primarily to fuel your life. Eat to support your daily activities and your efforts at fitness. I know, eating (and drinking) can be a source of meaningful pleasure, especially when it is done with friends and loved ones. Don’t give that up. What we are talking about is your regular nutrition. Think about the challenges that being less strong will pose for you as you get older. You are most likely under-serving protein. We lose muscle mass as we age, even if we strength train. Everything I’ve read says that we should be eating more protein.

What kind of protein? Again, my choices are driven by the reality of my suburban life. It is just too hard and too expensive to eat red meat from animals that provide the same quality protein as they did 100 years ago. By and large it seems that we should all be eating more plant-based protein at the expense of industrially produced animal-based protein. Fill in the spaces as you will. We eat fish and some poultry chez us.

Processed foods, while extremely convenient, all seem to contain stuff we just don’t need, and many are specifically engineered to encourage over-consumption. Sugar is mostly not great. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is straight up bad. While some will exclude most, or all carbohydrates (so-called carnivore diets), most of us prefer a diet that contains carbs of some sort. Learn the Glycemic Index and choose foods that have a low GI. Oranges and apples over bananas and mangoes. Green beans and Brussel sprouts instead of rice or pasta. Mushrooms. How about fat? Sure! Again, just be mindful about the fat. Don’t let some manufacturer mass-produce your fat intake. Avocados and macadamia nuts.

You get the picture.

How about the “When” to eat. Man, what a mess this is. Total see-saw. Eat when you are hungry vs. eat on a schedule. Traditional 3 squares or time limited. If you think the research on fasting makes sense (there is data suggesting that fasting increases longevity to a degree that is greater than just the caloric restriction) do you do a traditional long fast or do something like Intermittent Fasting? And if it’s IF how big is the window during which you eat? FWIW I find the evidence for fasting, specifically time-limited eating or IF, to be moderately compelling. Not more than the HOW MUCH or WHAT research but enough to dabble in IF most days. YMMV.

I guess it’s time to talk about alcohol. Listen, I do love me a delicious glass of “Tuesday wine” or a well-made “Side-swiped”. Research is all over the map on low-consumption levels, but heavier consumption levels have pretty much always been found to be bad for you. Stuff like liver disease we all know about, but there are some really nasty cancers (tongue, throat) that are definitely strongly associated with heavier drinking, to say nothing about not-so-great behaviors like driving under the influence. What is controversial is the question of low to moderate consumption. One or two drinks per day. All of the research, and I mean all of it on both sides of the conclusion fence, is flawed. Poorly controlled, under-powered studies that fail to filter out confounding factors are the rule.

I’m afraid there are no absolutes when it comes to alcohol. For every study that says every drop of alcohol, whether it’s pear vodka or Puligny-Montrachet, is poison there is one that purports to show that moderate consumption reduces all-cause mortality when compared to no consumption. Every “social coin” has a “heads” picture of close friends sharing a bottle of wine as they commune over a shared meal on the other side of a “tails” depicting a family destroyed by some drink-driven debacle. Can you effect temperance, or are you more aligned with Samuel Jackson who would say that forbearance is the easier path? For the time being, at least with moderate intake, the science isn’t helpful enough. You will have to be thoughtful and decide for yourself.

Test to help stratify your health risks. Eat to support your daily activities including the exercise that we will discuss in Healthspan Part 4. Remember, you are not just doing this for yourself, but for all of your friends and family members who want you to stick around and be healthy as long as possible.

1) Anniversary. Our beloved daughter Megan and son-in-law Ryan celebrated their 10th wedding Anniversary yesterday. 10 years! Man, what a ride for them. For us. The first of our kids to marry, Megan was singing along to the radio on the way to school when she promised me that “Butterfly Kisses” would be our Daddy/Daughter song. And in a blink of an eye, there we were, holding each other so tightly, dancing all alone to “Butterfly Kisses”, just like Megan promised.

Their light continues to shine. Happy Anniversary!

2) Ask. Ask for it. This comes up every now and again. If you want something, at least something that is reasonable to want, go ahead and ask for it. Thinking about this always makes me think about Wayne Gretzky: “you miss every shot you don’t take.” Mr. Gretzky didn’t score every time he got a shot on goal; sometimes the goalie made a save. For sure life is like this.

No one gets everything they ask for. I made a big ask of someone I am just getting to know in my professional world. We both acknowledged that, but he thanked me for making the ask because it made clear my commitment to both the endeavor we were discussing and my willingness to commit to both it and to him. Had I not asked he might not have gleaned that knowledge from the rest of the conversation, and for sure the likelihood of achieving my personal goal would be close to zero.

Take the shot. It’s the only way to score. Ask for it.

3) Temperance. This week’s “musings…” continue my exploration of extending Healthspan, the combination of longevity with health and well-being, as I tackle nutrition. Trust me, nutrition following on last week’s mini-rant on “Dry January” is pure coincidence. I will touch on the alcohol pseudo-controversy below, but I stumbled on this gem from an earlier time that sets the stage rather nicely. To be honest I actually tried to find this post last week. Herewith, gently updated thoughts on temperance:

“Beth and I have been on an adventure cruise, a quest of sorts. We’ve been exploring the wonders of the classic cocktail. Equal parts alchemy and indulgence, our trip has been more exciting (as all adventures are) because of the little bit of risk involved.

What if we find one (or two, or…) we really like?

Like many pleasures to drink is to willingly hold the proverbial double-edged sword in your hand; in this case the sword just happens to look like a martini glass. Alcohol as both a substance and a subject is complex and rife with controversy. It’s legal, but only to a point. It’s beneficial, but with a caveat–people who drink just enough live longer than those who drink more or not at all. As a chemical it’s a depressant, and yet in many circumstances it imbues joy in those who imbibe. It all comes down to a fine and delicate balance, not unlike a perfectly aged wine.

The matter of regulation intrudes on the pleasure. Knowing the existence of the second edge and maintaining an awareness of its cut is both necessary and nettlesome. If you find this lurking behind every glass it may rob you of the joy; if you careen from joy to joy you will inevitably suffer and bleed. Temperance, then, is the essential ingredient, the co-pilot who must be ever present on this particular trip.

Ah, but temperance, willful self-control can feel like a 50 MPH governor on a Ferrari, especially if you make the Indiana Jones-like discoveries we’ve made. It might be so difficult and so distasteful that you decide to roll your dice on the “not at all” line. “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.” Samuel Johnson. Indeed, temperance is so often fueled by the wraith “guilt.” There’s joy and pleasure to be had, but what if there’s too much? Ah, guilt.

It’s all so complicated, not unlike the math involved in the archaic elixirs we’ve been experiencing. So very hard sometimes to ease off the throttle without the aid of the governor. If the “Gizmo”, the “Sideswiped”, and the “Carro del Lô” be guilty pleasures we might ask my interesting discovery, the socialite Charlotte Stockdale, what she thinks of such things.

“I don’t have a guilty pleasure. I don’t really feel guilty about anything. What’s the point?”

As out of the corner of your eye you see it, the shadow of the double-edged sword, one edge Samuel, the other Stockdale.”

5) Healthspan Part 3: Nutrition*. “You can’t out train a lousy diet.” –Greg Glassman (and likely others)

To entertain both a long and a healthy life one must address how we go about fueling said life. Ya gotta eat. It’s WHAT you choose to eat, and let’s face it, HOW MUCH you eat that determines the effect of nutrition on your Healthspan. Add in at least a little bit of thought about WHEN you eat and you have the basic outline of how you can design your own personal plan for eating your way to a longer life that is freer from the ravages of chronic disease.

Or so says the guy who chose to not only have that extra glass of wine, but did so after consuming a bowl of ice cream after the stop time of my eating window had passed.

Let’s lay down some stipulations before we start. First, there is really no settled science behind any recommendations on what constitutes the one, best nutrition plan. Literally, none. This is me, giving you my distillation of my research and a view of what I am trying to do for myself and Beth. We shop in a grocery store and buy what is available there. We eat at home 5 or 6 days a week. There are a couple of allergies that force us to be a bit particular about recipes but don’t affect our Healthspan-driven options.

Start at the beginning: how much should you eat? Easiest answer ever…LESS! To know how much you should eat it is first necessary to know how much you are consuming now by measuring literally everything containing calories that you consume. There are any number of apps you can use (we used MyFitnessPal). Prepare to be shocked at what you find.

Eat primarily to fuel your life. Eat to support your daily activities and your efforts at fitness, not the production of fat. Think about the challenges that being less strong will pose for you as you get older. You are most likely under-serving protein. We lose muscle mass as we age, even if we strength train. Everything I’ve read says that we should be eating more protein.

What kind of protein? Again, my choices are driven by the reality of my suburban life. By and large it seems that we should all be eating more plant-based protein at the expense of industrially produced animal-based protein, especially red meat. Fill in the spaces as you will. We eat fish and some poultry chez us.

Sugar is mostly not great. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is straight up bad. Learn the Glycemic Index and choose foods that have a low GI. Oranges and apples over bananas and mangoes. Green beans and Brussel sprouts instead of rice or pasta. Mushrooms. How about fat? Sure! Again, just be mindful about the fat. Don’t let some manufacturer mass-produce your fat intake. Avocados and macadamia nuts.

You get the picture.

How about the “When” to eat. Man, what a mess this is. Total see-saw. Eat when you are hungry vs. eat on a schedule. Traditional 3 squares or time limited. FWIW I find the evidence for fasting, specifically time-limited eating or IF, to be moderately compelling. Not more than the HOW MUCH or WHAT research but enough to dabble in IF most days. YMMV.

I guess it’s time to talk about alcohol. I’m afraid there are no absolutes when it comes to alcohol. All of the research is flawed. Poorly controlled, under-powered studies that fail to filter out confounding factors are the rule. For every study that says every drop of alcohol, whether it’s pear vodka or Puligny-Montrachet, is poison there is one that purports to show that moderate consumption reduces all-cause mortality when compared to no consumption. Can you effect temperance, or are you more aligned with Samuel Jackson who would say that forbearance is the easier path? For the time being, at least with moderate intake, the science isn’t helpful enough. You will have to be thoughtful and decide for yourself.

Test to help stratify your health risks. Eat to support your daily activities including the exercise that we will discuss in Healthspan Part 4. Remember, you are not just doing this for yourself, but for all of your friends and family members who want you to stick around and be healthy as long as possible.

I’ll see you next week…

*A stand-alone expanded post on Healthspan and nutrition is coming this week.

1) Martini. A classic cocktail containing gin and vermouth that is stirred. Typically garnished with a pimento-stuffed olive. Substitute a cocktail onion and you no longer have a martini; you have concocted a Gibson.

2) Bradford. If you shake your gin and vermouth cocktail you have made a Bradford. It may be just me (it often is), but I think James Bond would have been even cooler had he pointed this out in the very first Fleming novel, and asked for a Bradford thereafter.

3) Turow. Lawyer turned author Scott Turow introduced himself to us with “Presumed Innocent”, a novel I read in the caddy shack one summer. One wonders if his latest, “Presumed Guilty” will complete the arc of his career, not unlike Don Winslow who has taken his leave from staring at the “blank page” with the publication of his “City Trilogy”.

Either way, how cool would it be to see Harrison Ford reprise Rusty Sabich?

4) Commitments. No, not making some kind of grand January commitment on top of whatever resolutions you made (and have likely already forsaken). I’m talking about the movie from the early ’90’s that followed an Irish start-up band that played classic R&B while their “manager” pined for a meeting with Wilson Pickett. Did you see it? I stumbled upon the soundtrack after listening to the Blues Brothers, and now Beth and I have it on while I pound away at my MacBook.

We definitely won’t be watching football tonight.

5) Dry. “I find abstinence to be as easy as I find moderation to be hard. ” –St. Augustine

“I have to admit to never giving much thought to where juniper comes from. It seemed good enough to know that without juniper there is not gin; without gin there are no Martinis; and absent Martinis you have a dystopia too awful to contemplate.” –Eric Felton in the WSJ

“I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never drink it–unless I’m thirsty.” –Lily Bollinger

Dry January is confusing. At least to me it is. I mean, if you abstain on a schedule without any larger incentive or inspiration than the randomness of the Roman calendar, is it even abstinence? I get traditional fasts like Ramadan and the various abstentions Catholics impose on themselves during Lent. There is a cultural significance, an ancestral gathering of sorts. Totally get it.

But Dry January? Sorry, I don’t get it.

Now please don’t conflate this with the notion that I somehow don’t understand the need for abstinence when true substance abuse or addiction is in play. There has been a bunch of all sorts of that in our extended families, and our living relatives so afflicted would agree with St. Augustine on the choice of abstinence. And I don’t really have any trouble or quarrel with folks who use January as a way to re-set their relationship with alcohol, or Pringles for that matter. It’s just another part of the declaration of better intentions made on behalf of yourself, and by extension those who care about you, in which we indulge as we hang a new calendar on the fridge.

Nope, it’s the nagging feeling of being nagged that sours my mood as surely as too much citrus fouls any number of classic cocktails. In truth it took Tressie McMillan Cottom’s column in the Sunday Times for this realization to bubble to the surface. I’ve always felt a certain unease with the way people publicize their Dry January plans and progress. Not everyone of course, but enough folks not just celebrating their decision but doing so from the pulpit. Preachy and judgy is how Ms. Cottom describes articles and posts. People who always, or nearly always abstain, because of addiction or otherwise, typically just say “no thanks” or simply order a Diet Coke. Dry Januarians seem compelled to tell you all about “why”.

Perhaps I’m a bit more cranky this January, coming as it does a couple of weeks after the Scolder…er…Surgeon General declared that minimal to moderate alcohol consumption raises the risk of multiple cancers so high that a newer, more damning warning should be put on every bottle or can. Just in time for Dry January. He did so despite an announcement literally only weeks prior by the NHI saying that with the possible exception of breast cancer, those who consume small to moderate amounts of alcohol have a lower “all cause” mortality than teetotalers, a conclusion reached with “moderate to strong certainty.”

I’ve always gotten a kick out of the George Thoroughgood song “I Drink Alone.” It’s catchy, has a couple of neat guitar licks, and rather than being an anthem for solo drinking it pokes fun at the very notion. At least for me. Have you watched the Netflix documentary on so-called “Blue Zones” where people tend to live longer, happier lives? With the exception of a Quaker community, all of these places tend to be ones in which people gather regularly and routinely, whether or not they are tippling. But tipple they do, in the company of friends and family. Do they get together in order to drink, or do they drink because they are together? The author of the study from which the documentary was made doesn’t examine that nuance.

Again, I honestly don’t care if you do or don’t choose to drink. It’s really a very personal choice, one that can be made for innumerable reasons, none of which are really anyone’s business. When I was a kid I chose not to indulge in cannabis, and as I got older by extension not to partake in any of the other various mind-altering substances available to those so inclined. Doesn’t really matter why, and I’m not sure I’ve ever really talked about it with almost anyone. And that’s probably what grates about Dry January, those that need to tell almost everyone all about it.

There is one circumstance where you are quite welcome to share your Dry January plans, though. If we are together, out for dinner or taking in a ballgame either at the arena or in one of our buddy’s living rooms, feel free to let us all know that you won’t be having a cocktail, glass of wine, or a beer. We are hanging out, not checking out each other’s InstaFace Tokster posts, and we are likely friendly enough that face to face we will forgive you a little victory dance. Your’e sober, after all; how crazy are you gonna get.

We’re all just thankful that you’ve volunteered to be the Designated Driver for 31 straight days.

Damp or dry, I’ll see you next week…

“How was your Birthday, Dr. White?”

It’s amazing how, where, and why so many epiphanies arrive. Honestly, I’m not sure why this surprises me. I really haven’t had all that many of what could or should really be called epiphanies, but the few that I have had have all kinda snuck up on me out of the blue mist of the mundane. For example, while playing golf with my Dad the week after 9/11 I was stopped in my tracks when a very simple, altogether reasonable question–do you want to play the Ocean Course again–delivered to me a two part gem. The stuff that makes me unhappy brings me down lower than the stuff that makes me happy picks me up. You can’t necessarily make the happy stuff happy all the time, but you can surely make an effort to avoid at least SOME of the unhappy stuff once it’s been identified.

I hated the Ocean Course; no, thank you, I’d rather not play it again.

And so it was that I found myself answering all kinds of folks who were genuinely interested in how my 65th birthday went. What did I do to mark the occasion? Did I enjoy the day? How was I feeling about 65? Normal questions asked in good faith by decent folks. I spent a goodly part of each day answering each person with some version of “good” or “great” or “you know, it’s just a number after all”, and “that’s very kind” when they expressed disbelief at the number in question. It was nice, actually, to receive those tiny gifts of interest from so many people, most of whom live lives that only intersect with the professional and not the personal version of who I might be at any given point.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve become a bit kinder to myself, especially when it comes to time. It’s a cliche, of course, but time is really the most valuable thing no one has enough of. A very nice benefit of being my own boss is the ability to give myself the gift of time during my birthday week even though I was returning from a lengthy Holiday break. Some of that time was quite productive (I reviewed a very complex case as an expert witness), some of it was put to practical use (I’m rebuilding the fitness habits that fell apart along with my hips), but the real gift was the luxury of indulging in tiny little pleasures, like my love for finales.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find “lasts” so fascinating? Beth is endlessly tickled by how hard I will work to watch the last episode of a television series I barely followed, or read the final entry of a long-running serial or book series. I think it started with the finale of M*A*S*H. The most recent favorite has to be Ted Lasso. Did you ever read that series about the female detective, maybe she was a doctor, where each book was titled with a letter? You know, “C Is For Whatever”, and so on? When the author got to “Y” I was literally going to read “A” so that I could read “Z” so that I could then see how she closed out her epic trip through the alphabet. I swear that I was as saddened by the author’s passing before she started “Z” as any devoted reader who’d made it from “A to Y”.

All of which is a build-up to the gift of watching the recording that I made of Hoda Kotb’s final 3 hours as co-host of NBC’s Today show. We are Today Show watchers, Beth and I. Hoda’s story is a good one. She seems to be a genuinely nice person, someone who truly likes, nay loves, most of the folks around her. Someone who is grateful for the life she gets to live. Unlike so many famous TV personalities she was leaving the show on her own terms for reasons that I can personally understand and support: she wished to be home with and for her two grade-school daughters as they grew up.

And then, there it was. Pretty much the last guest was a country music star, a guy named Walker Hays. Now, I am not the country music guy in the family, although everyone will likely agree that I’ve become at least conversant with the genre as it has become more “pop” in recent years. Still, I needed to Google Hays to “remember” that his big hit is “We Fancy”, or something like that. But here he was, strumming a guitar as he entered stage left, singing a song that he and Hoda had written together called “Wednesday”* and bringing with him my epiphany: Most days are just Wednesdays. A truly happy life is one where you are grateful, truly grateful, for the Wednesdays.

“Some days are the best days. Some days are ‘she said yes’ days. Some days are ‘it’s a girl, good Lord how in the world did I get blessed’ days. Some days are the worst days, on the taillights of a hearse days.

Most days are just Wednesdays. Get up and do the same old same again’s days.

If tomorrow ain’t nothing new, I’m just glad I get to do, just another Wednesday with you.”

Seriously, how good is that?! I went through half a box of tissues, me and everyone in that studio audience just yanking ’em out of the box, watching and listening as my big old epiphany landed. Most days are just days. Events, happenings, milestones might be what we remember, might be how we track our stories, but it’s all of those plain old every days that make up a life. Finding the joys of those every days, and more importantly being grateful for the micro joys that make up those days, is the key to happiness.

“What did you do on your birthday?” I went to work. It was a Tuesday and so I went to the operating room, and then I did a bunch of lasers, and after that saw a bunch of folks in the clinic. I got to help some really nice people be healthy. I spent the night with my Better 95%. We had dinner at home. Chicken. Not a birthday dinner but a recipe we have maybe once a week. Had a glass of “Tuesday Wine”. Watched a TV show we’ve been enjoying. It was just another Tuesday, nothing new, in a place that makes me happy and with the person I love more than anyone or anything, like so many Tuesdays I’ve been lucky to have over so many years.

Thank you for the Birthday wishes. It was just another Tuesday. It doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ll see you next week…

Twelve hour drive home yesterday after visiting Megan, Ryan, Tracey and Steve in the Low Country. 20ish degree high for the day, much too cold to brave the garage gym. A few errands, 11 or 12 newspapers to get through, groceries and laundry, a possible EPIC step toward landing the plane, and all of a sudden I realize, no “musings…”!

I came upon this gem and I think it is as applicable today as it was some 10+ years ago. Did you make any resolutions? I did. Well, sorta kinda did. If I didn’t work out today does that mean I already punted one of the big ones? For whatever it’s worth I’m off tomorrow and will doubtless squeeze something that looks like exercise in, so I’m going with “no” on that one. Last year ended pretty OK, and so far 2025 is starting off pretty OK, too. I’m just gonna go with that.

So rather than stress myself out by postponing a well-deserved, much welcomed “Sideswiped” I’m just going to help myself (and you) to a little dish of New Year’s leftovers with this re-post from the past:

Tons of random stuff banging around between my ears, so much that it’s a little difficult to wade through and make sense of any of it. One little thing keeps bubbling up to the surface, long enough at least to be noticed: the lowly comma. Mathew McConaughy describes himself as a “comma person”. I get that.

What with all of the New Year’s resolution action, here and, well, everywhere, it can get to feeling like there really is a discreet finish to a year. A ‘period’. Full Stop. Does it seem like that to you? Everyone gets all in a rush to finish off a year, in this case 2013, so that they can get started on the next one. All kinds of retrospectives, writ large and small, come cascading down at the end of the year. As if it really was an end. Capped by a ‘period’, you know?

The thing is, though, that I don’t really feel all that different. It doesn’t really feel like anything was all that completed on December 31st. Or, for that matter, like there’s any huge new start, re-boot, or even a mulligan just after that ‘period’. Sure, there’s a really convenient opportunity to take stock, maybe make some adjustments or even re-route, but the longer I’ve been at this New Year thing the less it seems like anything is ever really at Full Stop.

More like a pause. That’s it. Not a ‘period’ so much as a ‘comma’ leading into whatever comes next.

A sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, or the whole darned story ends with a period. The year is over and the last box has been checked, but the story continues on New Year’s Day. Even the most severe pivot is still connected to the other side of the angle, the beginning of the line. The line, the sentence, the story and the life do not really stop at all; New Year, Birthday, whatever. We may pause, indeed we do pause, sometimes quite often. Full stop? Nah. Not us.

That’s what’s got me thinking about the comma. The story goes on and on, one big run-on sentence with an occasional pause but never a stop. It’s connected front to back, side to side, and start to finish by those pauses, by the lowly comma. I think I get what McConaughy is getting at. New Year’s Day is a comma place for sure, but neither time nor life hits a ‘period’ there, either. We just keep on going. The comma means there’s more to come.

I think I might be a “comma person”, too.

And there you go. Not bad, eh? Seems like I used to be pretty good at this “musings…” stuff. For what it’s worth when I re-read this I found myself nodding along. I will likely never have the pleasure of meeting Mr. McConaughy, let alone chat with him, but heretofore I’m going to think of the two of us as “brothers in comma”.

Happy New Year. I’ll see you next week…