Poor Richard's Scorecard

Because Into Every Life a Little Change Must Fall

The freelance life is wonderful, full of flexibility and autonomy and hunkering down at cool coffee shops to work. It is also personally and professionally isolating. Not only does one spend large swaths of time alone; the nature of the work--project-specific and exceedingly tactical--is such that what one does often goes from one's laptop to the client and is never heard from again. For these reasons I made the difficult decision last year to return to in-house employment.

From Bah, Humbug, to Fa La La La La, La La La La in One Easy Step

And just like that, Thanksgiving is forgotten, shoved brusquely aside by so many midnight openings, door-buster deals, and Black Friday sales. With stores putting up their Christmas trees around Labor Day, Thanksgiving has become little more than a football- and food-drenched speed bump on our way to late December's orgy of consumption. Once upon a time this bothered me quite a bit, but in recent years I've given up trying to maintain the illusion of Yuletime purity.

Why Else Would I Still Remember Wayne Twitchell's Name After All These Years?

Just about everyone in Philadelphia has a Harry Kalas story. In the nearly week that has passed since his death, many have talked--in print, on the air, to friends--about personal experiences with the man, the special calls that touched their lives, the soundtrack he provided during endless summers at the Shore. My appreciation of Harry and my mourning are similarly based, but there is more as well, another reason he'll always be with me as long as I follow baseball.

Does It Ever End?

Last night, at the fiction workshop I'm part of, I confessed to my fellow writers that I've done a poor job lately of putting myself in a good position to do something I love. At the start of each session, we go around the coffee table and check in our progress over the prior two weeks, and I had to admit that I had done barely any creative writing. Every week, it seems, I renew the pledge to carve out an hour a day just to write, and every week there are reasons--some very valid, some less so--to push it off the to-do list until tomorrow.

Some simplification is in order, I think.

Welcome to Five Days After the First Day of the Rest of My Life

Last Thursday I turned 40. Unlike a decade earlier, when I celebrated the entrance into my 30s by driving two hours home from Hershey and stewing in self-loathing over all that I had yet to accomplish, I actually enjoyed this milestone. I spent that afternoon at a local watering hole, eating nachos, quaffing Sierra Nevada, and watching the first round of the NCAA Tournament, and that evening with my family eating terrific Chinese takeout and drinking wine. Then I welcomed a bunch of family and friends Saturday night for a big ol' party. More significantly, I greeted the new decade with a far better sense of self than I had 10 years before.

Oh, Right, the Holidays Are Finally Over

Boy, you take a week-and-a-half off to spend time with the family and catch up on work and suddenly the official departure of your starting leftfielder becomes just the third biggest sports story of the week. From the ridiculous (J.C. Romero's suspension) to the sublime (the Eagles' win), events conspired to overshadow Pat Burrell's signing by the Devil Rays, for whom he will serve as designated hitter. This is just about the perfect role for a slugger who can't run and is a near-certain candidate for late-inning replacement for defensive purposes. Fare thee well, Pat the Bat.