Life is nothing, if not a series of turning points. Some positive, some negative--all designed to test your mettle, to help you find yourself, to shape your identity as an individual. 2006 was a rough 365 on the personal, the daily grind a scenario that found getting out of bed in the morning a triumph. You let such dark days crush you, or as Mr. Logan would say "you break them."
Instead of being broken, I did the only thing I knew, I retreated inward, lost myself in the process. Went back to family, back to my training, back to the lab, back to the dream. The first 50 or so pages of "Ice Grill, USA" were written piecemeal under these ideal conditions... Get up at 6am, make my hour+ commute to work, work all day, scoop Sko up at the Jersey Ave NJ Transit stop, stop at Subway on the way home if we were lucky enough to be able to scrape together the skrilla for a sandwich and a Diet Dr. Pepper. (Double meat? Maybe someday.) Get back to the crib in PA, go up to the loft and scribble on the yellow legal pads until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, pass out, wake up, do it again. It was all coming together slowly and sporadically, a page here, a scene there--as life's responsibilities would permit. At times, it felt as if it may never get done, as if it would all just kinda drag on forever until the enthusiasm for it all would just eventually fade.
Having a few vacation days to burn as December came around, depressed, lost and unsure of what the next day would bring, I made a choice. I took a 48 hr block and started a cycle of writing a scene, sleeping for 2 hrs, writing a scene and so on. A couple of days later, I would pick Sko up at the train station and drop thirty odd pages of yellow legal chickenscratch into his lap. That was all the motivation either of us needed to get the ball rolling for real. From that point on IGU kind of took on a life and momentum all its own. That was just the first of countless turning points of this saga, but it is one I'll never forget and is one I'll forever be thankful for...
