A year ago, I wasn't here.

We gave the MINI a bath tonight and then, like people who can't get off the associative logic train, went over to Target to buy a bathtub for the boy that we expect to be coming into out lives in just a matter of weeks (that would be two weeks).

Last night, I spent the evening frantically working up some theatre applications and looking over the plays I've been working on for the last year.

For some reason these actions all got me thinking about what I was doing last year at this time - and how, at that time, I probably could've only really predicted one of these two evenings: the one where I frantically worked up the theatre applications.

Why? Because that's what I KNOW how to do. It's the way I've been living for the last 6 years.

But last year, I certainly wouldn't have thought I was going to be here, in LA, washing a MINI and buying a baby bathtub.

Oh, no. Last year, this week, I was sitting in a Manhattan office being told by a very concerned HR person that I HAD TO DECIDE IF I WAS WORKING FOR THE AD AGENCY. OR NOT.

Okay, so it wasn't put in big capital letters. Or shouted at me.

But it was a kind of ultimatum that was asking me, I felt, to choose between being in NY without my wife, or being on the West Coast, with my wife, but without a job. Being pencil pushers, they were unwilling to see it any other way even though the split life had given them an advertising campaign that had gotten them more attention than they'd recieved in years for their creative work.

Obviously, I made the right choice.

Interestingly, the people who pushed me to leave were all pushed out themselves within 8 months and the agency that they were once part of is, itself, from what I hear, falling apart.

I do not mean to gloat. I've got plenty of things to work out and financial uncertainty is certainly not fun.

But, on the other hand, I took a risk - along with my wife - to try something different.

Others stayed where they were not realizing that that was just as risky a thing to do.

If not moreso.

Ah, the gut. Such a good thing to follow.

Second only to the heart.

For more on this subject, Don Hall has a few things to say. As you'd expect.

(By the way, that's my pregnant wife back there in the picture - she looks GOOD doesn't she?)