Suddenly i'm so happy. Meaning, of coure, that i'm wriiting again. Wildly.

Not for a few days, actually, because I just rented a studio down the hall as my writing studio, and you wouldn't believe all the work getting it together. But loving that, too. Should have done this ages ago. Don't write in your apartment. Not if you don't have to. I was just so scared of being poor again, didn't want to risk spending any of the money I had made. But I earned it and I needed this, and man does it feel great.

Got a little wireless network now, which is too cool, running from my apartment to my studio, though for the moment it's mostly just letting me do all my web stuff on my laptop from the couch. This, for instance.

I'm not allowed to actually use it in the studio, except for book research and then only by getting up and doing it from the other PC at the other table. No web allowed at my writing desk. No web play anywhere in the studio. No TV. My two favorite activities in the world, it would seem--if you gauge by time occupied--and who would of guessed how liberating it would feel to be free of them.

Not entirely, of course, just in my work space. None of that distraction pollution. And since I've been spending nearly every waking moment down in that office--or moving into it--so far there's benn little time for my old little buddies.

Great research trip to Boston of all places for a Columbine book, great interviews, loads and loads of developments. It's just gushing out, now. Very exciting.

And then sometimes . . .

Just when you thought no TV creator would ever come close to getting a finale right.

Six Feet Under. Wow. Is it too late to take back all the whining about Nate--not killing him off, keeping him around; heeheehee--and all the other annoying whining depressing freaks on that show? All worth it now.

If you're just joinig the discussionn, I was too poor for HBO until this season, so I've only known this family about four months, starting with a marathon of last season, and then this summer's installments one week at a time.

Enough to get invested. These people.That ending. Just got to it. Got home from two and a half weeks on the road late last Monday, and I've been doling the final three episodes out over that period. Was thinking I might just take in half of the finale over dinner and get back to work quickly, but there was no way I was pulling myself away from that.

I could have gone through an entire box of kleenex but I just let them trickle down onto my chest.

I'm so grateful Alan Ball actually granted us some peace. We needed it with these people. And that closing montage. Extraordinary.

On paper I think I might have winced. You're supposed to resist all the trite little endings where every little storyline is wrapped up with a nice little bow, right? That's been the rule ever since I've been writing. Rules, rules rules. How we let them rule us. hehehe.

It didn't feel like it was really wrapping them up so much, it felt much more about the exhilaration of how much road she still had ahead of her. That they all did. But her in particular. I'm so glad they closed with Clare. For the longest time she drove me nuts, but over the past season she's slowly drifted toward the emotional center of it all for me. Because she was so unrealized?

But she will be. And she has no idea. Driving down that bleak lonely highway, and she has no idea what's ahead of her, how she will deal with it how long it will last. Eighty more years. God. An entire lifetime ahead of her.

These people all feel so tragic sometimes, because they can't get over seeing themselves that way. They see it all so hopeless. Locked into so damn many cages, they can't begin to figure out how they could dig themselves out of them.

And yet they will. And it will be glorious.

Thank you Alan.

I want to go write, now.