It’s taken me five days to get to this point—to the point where I feel like all I can write about is not having anything to write about. The French call it le syndrome de la page blanche, which roughly translated, as I understand it, means “fear of the blank page.” But I don’t fear the blank page so much as I fear writing about not having anything to write about.

For any writer, I think there is usually a period of the writing session where he is simply trying to get his bearings. Find his rhythm. Figure out what it is exactly that he’s trying to say. Most bloggers (do people still blog?) don’t have (or don’t take) the time for extensive rewrites, which is why many blogs are painful to read. Entries often feel like someone punctured a carotid artery and just let the reader get covered with the hematic mist.

I thought about tweeting “What should I write about?” and crowdsourcing my ideation to the hive, but it always smacks of laziness when I see others do that. So don’t expect a lot of these posts. I’ll give myself assignments if I have to. I’ll write about falling asleep on the floor of my boys’ room as I tell their bedtime story or how I find myself racing dudes in Dodge Chargers who cut me off on the way to work—more often than I’d like to admit.

So give me a pass. Just this once.