One of life’s great joys is going out to eat solo. You’re seated before the parties of yuppies, grumbling all well-to-do and aloof while you slurp down tasty noodles in salty pork broth that make right everything in your benignly troubled world.

Like all artists, I pride myself on living a life more or less devoid of actual responsibility, and whenever I’m yanked from my idyllic little bubble I tend to get discombobulated and doomsday-ish. So today, as I deal with rudimentary by any definition tasks that most high school kids are capable of handling, I self-sooth via porky, soupy deliciousness, thinking about how laughably easy my life is.

And when I think about how laughably easy my life is, I reflect on how getting out of my own way’s something I’m much better at these days, but perhaps my kind-yet-hyper-disciplined monastic vibe needs dialing back a notch, and as much as a walking top hat and monocle’s capable of cutting lose, I probably should.

And then the thought of my “cutting lose,” ie reading in public with like a whiskey or something, makes me laugh out loud, and I dream of being reincarnated as a member of the year 2300’s Mötley Crüe.