I once met an interesting guy, and we were talking and then kissing and then talking again, and the whole thing had the usual supernatural feeling that most of my intimate encounters tend to have. In our third round of talking and kissing, he told me that he liked me. "So far you like me. You don't know me all too well." Did I mention that we had met that night?

"True", he said. "So I guess I like the idea of you." That made me smile.

"God. I like the idea of you too."

"Well, I am glad the idea of you and me get along so well." We went into round four.

See, I get very worked up when I meet someone new, I am going for a new job (I got my new job by the way!), or I am moving in to a new place. I see the shadow of everything. The exterior. But of course, it really is just the idea of the situation that is so appealing. You get the new place with the gorgeous view of the Observatory and the redwood tree out front, move in, and find that ants also like the redwood tree and view too. The new job comes along, and you relish in the prestige of it, until you realize you have no idea what you're doing and the life you thought you had is gone in overtime and cocktail meetings.

However, there has to be an idea to allow for inspiration. And the inpiration gestates into a lot of hard work and time, so that in the end, a good creative soul can find him or her self staring at a brilliant piece of art. "It's a fixer-upper", you hear people say. Not that I want to be another man's weekend art project laying around the house, but I understand the fact that we all get enchanted by ideas. We are enticed by the promise of something, and that sometimes that idea can lead us to a dead end. But conversely, sometimes that idea leads us to the beginning of a road or a weekend art project that quickly becomes our life's passionate blood. So allowing the idea to become a living part of our lives can be fulfilling, no matter the outcome.

I have been a writer all of my life. A billion ideas have swam in and out of my mind. Some I bump into and want to revisit. Others are gone as quickly as the morning after a brief make-out encounter. Regardless, these have all laid seed to the man I am now. And that's a good thing. At least I think so.

What about it?