I was a big shot at one time, which I knew because when I went to work at the office,

twelve people suddenly got very busy.

I had a popular radio show and I pulled the plug on it, not wanting to become a living

legend, a last connection to broadcasting's past when music came on big black vinyl discs

and everyone had an ashtray on their desk.

I left Minnesota because there were so many middle-aged people there who loathed the

sight of me because they'd been forced by their parents to listen to my radio show on

long car trips and I was afraid one of them might throttle me so I moved to Manhattan

where I felt very safe.

And now my office is my kitchen and it's just me and the coffee maker and the toaster

and eventually my sweetie wakes up and walks in and says, what are you doing up so early?

Well, I'm doing the same thing I did when I was important.

I do a sort of ventriloquism in which I talk in the voice of old relatives who are all

dead but their voice is still in my head and as long as I keep using it I keep them alive.

I also stay sane.

Twitter is not part of my world, I am not an influencer.

I used to drive onto the influence but I don't anymore.

I interrupted writing for a while today to have a Zoom meeting about estate planning

with a couple of lawyers in Minneapolis and for a discussion cited on my own eventual

death it was a lot of fun, we laughed a lot.

They mentioned legacy and I laughed, what legacy?

There's no such thing.

...