I have been negligent with my blog. I have it written in over a month. I know it. I’m sorry.

I mean the absolute worst thing a blogger can do is to stop blogging. Like I said before, I am sorry.

I know I probably ruined your whole holiday season because instead of making merry with friends and family, you’re thinking where is the third installment of Customer Service Apocalypse and why hasn’t Tom published the end of the story. How inconsiderate of him to make me wait.

Look, I’ve already apologized. Twice.

I had things to do.

And, like, I am artist. You can’t force the Muse to produce when the Muse has job interviews and Christmas to prepare for. The Muse must prioritize.

But, as you are my loyal readers, and I appreciate your loyalty, I offer you now an explanation.

As you remember, I was writing a three-part expose that was going to blow the lid off of bad Customer Service called Customer Service Apocalypse. I carefully wrote my notes on the back of an old envelope while I was on hold with the Customer
Service agent.

 

Which I think I should get some ecologically conscious points for. It’s not like I took a clean piece of paper and started writing. No, despite my irritation with the customer service agent, I retained my eco-consciousness; I scrounged for an old envelope so I wouldn’t have to fell a tree using a blank sheet of paper. Because I care, you know.

 

The notes were fantastic. They ran across three old envelopes. Every word of my conversations with the Customer Service agent and her managers noted. I scribbled the wonderful, witty, sarcastic thoughts I was going to write when the time came. I counted the minutes I was on hold so you would get the sense of the time I was wasting. I noted the number of times I was transferred to illustrate the company’s confusion about what I was asking. Everything carefully documented. It was positively brilliant. The blog was writing itself.

Then Thanksgiving happened. We had houseguests. And I am not blaming the houseguests in any way. They were here however. This can’t be ignored. After they arrived, the muse somehow slipped out the back door. And, of course, while she was away things happened. Drinking happened. Dinners happened. Nights on the town happened. Movies in the afternoon happened. Late rising mornings happened. The muse is a sensitive being. She stayed away the entire time we had houseguests.

After Thanksgiving, the Muse was ready but I had a job interview. The Muse has to eat too. I prepared for the interview like a demon. I investigated the company. I diligently rehearsed replies to standard questions. You know the ones about my strengths, my weaknesses, and what my boss would say about my work. This takes a lot of time and the Muse wasn’t about to stick around the house for that. She is an artist after all. She wants to hang out with Tom the artist not Tom the job seeker.

So the day of the interview comes and damn if the interviewer didn’t ask all of the questions I so carefully prepared for. He pitched a question about my strengths. Kaboom. Home run. Then another question flew across the plate about my weaknesses. Kaboom. Home room number 2. Then a question about what my old boss would say about me. Kaboom. Home Run number 3.

I was batting 1.000 until he threw a curve ball. A really tricky curve ball. He asked why I managed less work than all of my colleagues. Now where did he get that information and who the Hell gave him that information? Well, apparently, I did. He shows me these numbers from my resume and quotes some numbers I gave him during the interview. He does some fancy math that proves I was managing less work than my colleagues.

There is no way his figures be right. He surely has made a mistake and I am the person to show him the errors of his way. So I do the math.

Not like any sane person with a piece of paper and a pen. Or quietly in my head. No I use that sure fire double combination of the invisible blackboard and mumbling incoherently. You see, I have to see numbers, if only for second in my mind, in order to remember the numbers I am calculating. I raise my finger to the air in front of me and begin writing so I can begin calculating. The interviewer awkwardly stops speaking and watches me do my math.

He hears something like this. “Murmur, murmur, murmur carry the two, murmur, murmur that makes this sixteen, murmur, murmur, no that can’t be right.”

The numbers, of course, don’t add up. I erase the air blackboard and try to recalculate. I still can’t get them to add up. Finally, the interviewer puts me out of my misery and says, “it isn’t important.” Except, for me, it has suddenly become very important. Every question afterwards is tainted with me trying to redo the math. I become distracted and don’t hear questions. I ask him to repeat himself. The great interview I was giving slowly slips into mediocrity.

Needless to say, but I will any way, I didn’t get the job. Which bums the Muse out. The Muse and I take a few days off to mourn my loss. And then, what do you know Christmas happens. Christmas requires a lot of attention and travel and well before you know it is a month without blogging.

So here we are today. I am trying to write Customer Service Apocalypse Part III. The muse is ready. My fingers are rested and ready to type. Full Speed ahead, right. Wrong. Unfortunately, the envelopes with all of my notes have gone missing. Well, I think they have gone missing. They may be somewhere on my desk. Chances are it is there because I never throw any of the scrap papers the Muse writes her fantastic ideas on.

Indeed, I have maybe thirty or so old envelopes and scraps of paper scattered across my desk. I have checked each and every one looking for my notes. And I rechecked them again when I can’t find my notes. There there somewhere I know it.

No problem says the Muse. You can write your story from memory. It was such a vivid and emotional experience. Just the type of experience that will stick in the old noggin, right? Wrong. I am at a loss about what happened and even how it ended.

The Muse is irritated. She suggests writing about one of my other ideas on one of the many scraps of paper on my desk. “You can return to Customer Service Apocalypse Part III when you find your notes,” she says.

Her response, of course, irritates me. She is all art art art. She wants to create. Lives to create but has no business sense or feelings of responsibility to our readers. Besides, I think, it was her damn idea to write my notes on all those scraps of paper in the first place. Now that we have a crisis with the blog, she is all forget it, move on to the next blog, don’t worry about any obligation you have to your reader to complete a story.

“Would Charles Dickens leave one story incomplete and start another one leaving his readers in the lurch?”

“Would Charles Dickens lose his notes in the first place,” she replies.  “ Besides, there are no rules to blogging. That is the whole point of blogging. You can do what ever you want whenever you want. “

I let her bully me into starting a new blog but I insisted on explaining to you dear readers who are waiting for Customer Service Apocalypse Part III what happened so I can lessen any anxiety you might be experiencing.

I am sorry if this upsets you. All I can say in my defense is I am artist.

Damn it.