As some of you may have heard, I recently quit my job of more than three years to spend twelve months doing...well, nothing in particular, really, although hopefully it will involve staying in Brooklyn, writing a novel, and occasionally going to the ballet. This particular decision was the product of about eight hundred separate epiphanies, of which the following is a random sample:

1. The last scene of Brokeback Mountain. Enough said.
2. Moby's controversial cover of "Temptation" by New Order. A lot of people find it soporific, but there's something in the way that the singer whispers "From time to time / I find I've lost some meaning / That was urgent to myself / I do believe" that makes me want to run off to an ashram somewhere.
3. The following speech from The Phantom Tollbooth, spoken by the Terrible Trivium: "There are things to fill and things to empty, things to take away and things to bring back, things to pick up and things to put down, and besides all that we have pencils to sharpen, holes to dig, nails to straighten, stamps to lick, and ever so much more. Why, if you stay here, you'll never have to think again—and with a little practice you can become a monster of habit, too."

By the way, if you haven't read The Phantom Tollbooth since you were ten years old (or haven't read it at all), you might want to pick it up again. I recently reread it for the first time in about fifteen years, and was blown away at how much more sense it makes to me today, even after I voluntarily relocated from Dictionopolis to the Mountains of Ignorance.