Grab your phone book, and no not a website that provides numbers, you have to have the pages in hand for this to work. Something about being tactile.

Flip to a random residential page.
You can either pick a name at random, or find a name that agrees with you.

Here you have two options, and both have worked very well for me.
Either you call, or you write the name you picked.

Herein lies possibility.

From time to time I will actually state to the person I get on the line, “I can’t create right now. What should I do?” And their response, whether logical, intelligent, or otherwise is always great fodder.

Now, if you choose to write more meaningful things tend to occur. (At least in my experience.)

It all kind of depends what you need and what you are looking for on that plane.

But, in any event, it ends all the grey crap that clutters and surrounds.

I’ll give it you, if needed.
But shh.
You know?

Mike — I like your thinking, though I might have to build the experience beyond just being “ridiculous, wasteful and intensely, sinfully pleasurable’, because that could just describe eating Marmite Babybels, and I do that already.

L — I can play spoons.

Ani — So are you saying you’re young? You know there’s an age limit to reading An Unreliable Witness, don’t you?

Cheerful One — I like the band name. What I really need though, if I’m going to start a band, would be a ukulele-playing duo to provide backing music. Hmm.

Hg — I know you speak sense, but if I can plan it I might not find it so exhausting. And that means I’ll be able to get to bed earlier. Which is the main concern I have, really.

In my experience, it’s rather a waste of time to try to avert or control one’s mid-life crisis by planning it in advance. It just sneaks away and ambushes you from a different angle instead.

(just saying)

You know you want to.

You know you really want to.

Ani: Mid Life Crisis is what you do when you look back at your rebellious teens and decide you weren’t nearly rebellious enough. Only with a bit more money.

Sorry, am I making it sound like mid-life crises are Bad Things? Oh, they’re not really. Rather, they’re a necessary rite of passage, and HUGE fun (for a while). But “sensible and creative” they most certainly are NOT. So might I suggest chucking “sensible and creative” aside, in favour of “ridiculous, wasteful and intensely, sinfully pleasurable”?

Good. Glad we cleared that up.