The working title for my "10 Minutes of Writing" exercises will now be "You Don't Know Jack."

Once a year Jack would suffer the same fate. Being relatively unobservant, Jack would fail to notice that the glory days of Spring were coming to an end. The days were growing longer and people’s fuses were growing shorter. The love that so filled the air in the height of Spring was slowly being replaced by the state smell of urine. Ah – to be in New York in the Summer time… All of this was lost to Jack. That was, of course, until Jack lived through his annual ritual of the corduroy pants.

A man of average build Jack leaned slightly towards the stout side. He wasn’t fat, but he certainly hadn’t skipped meals either. On 364 days of the year his slightly heavy legs posed no issue whatsoever. Day 365 was another matter. The favorite corduroy pants that clad his thighs every Thursday throughout the Fall, Winter, and Spring would cease to be a comfort and, instead, become a fabric tinderbox. Jack would look to the sign on the local bank. 82 degrees it read. However, with every step the swish of his pants told a different story. 83, 84, 85, 86. He was all but certain that soon his crotch would burst into a huge ball of flames. 87. He cursed his pants. He also cursed himself. He knew that this happened the previous year and the year before that and that…..

His cat, Mr. Whiskers, slowly circled the large bottle of pills which stood on the kitchen table. “Surely this time I’ll be successful,” Jack muttered to himself in a barely audible voice.

To be fair, it’s not that Jack lacked either the courage or the follow-through to kill himself. It’s just that, like everything else in his life, Jack was simply no good at pulling together the essential details of a plan. This would be his third and final attempt to off himself. Jack had already decided that if he were to fail again, his punishment would be life.

His first attempt at suicide was a miserable failure. In a fit of depression over Kate, the object of a 7 year lusting and a woman who had made the mistake of displaying a small amount of interest in Jack albeit as friends, Jack had made the decision to end his own life.

Jack sat in the garage with the engine running and a long tube connecting the tailpipe to the interior cabin. For three hours Jack sat in that car. It wasn’t until the clock clicked into hour number four that Jack gave up and turned off the car. His Prius just wouldn’t cooperate.

Attempt two was, in a manner of speaking, more successful in that it caused both bodily harm and a great deal of fear. He learned the hard way that the “gun” his nephew owned was, in fact, a paint gun complete with red “bullets.” Jack took a deep breath, pulled the trigger, and waited for death. He knew that the shot was a direct hit when he saw the red blood splatter against the wall. Still alive, Jack reached to touch the wound. His ghoulish mind though that it might be fun to stick his finger into the fresh hole. Though, probe as he might, he just couldn’t find the wound. Eventually Jack learned the error of his ways, wiped the paint from his head and went to work. He was comforted by the fact that he would at least see Kate there.

“This time was different though,” Jack thought. Mr. Whiskers was less convinced that Vitamin C would be deadly….

So I'm trying something new... Every day(ish) I'm gonna just open up the notepad and write for 10 minutes. It might be random and it might not be. I don't know. In any case, here is today's 10 minute exercise. If you've got 10 minutes to spare add a comment with your creative exercise for the day.

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Jack looked around the room with disgust. It’s hard to overstate how much Jack hated going to the doctor’s office. Multiply this by an order of magnitude you’ll near Jack’s mood while sitting in the waiting room of what he considered to be the worst of the bunch, the dermatologist. The source of his consternation was the sea of unseen rashes which he was sure hid under the layers of clothing around him. He could just picture the boils, blisters, and ooze that dripped from those skin infestations. Logically he understood that little cancers were the likely cause of so many of his fellow patients' visits. However, he just couldn’t escape the mental picture of bodies filled with sores.

Jack leafed through an old People magazine. Sadly, it showed the once happy Brad and Jennifer on a beach in Aruba. “Poor Jennifer,” he thought, “she’s in for a world of hurt.”

The bell attached to the door clanged as another walked in. A big smile spread across Jack’s face as the teenage boy walked through the door. Look at those zits! No need to worry about his rashes. Give that boy some AcuTane and get him on his way.

It was time for the rubber to meet the road, to shit or get off the pot, etc. etc. That’s right -- I either needed to a) write something or b) officially put a sign up saying “This site has now joined the 1,900,000 other dead weblogs in the sky.”

I realize that the chances of anyone reading this are slim. I’ve given you no reason to come back. I can really only thank god for the power of the RSS feed. No other tool has helped to bring a site back to life with such alacrity.

It’s not that I’ve stopped writing. Yes, I’m still doing my weekly column for Engadget. It’s just that I have gotten out of the habit of memorializing those random thoughts and observations that seem to be all-present in my life.

Before I continue – I really do have to give special recognition to loyal reader Erin. She did her best to force me out of my hibernation. I’d also like to point out that she did it honestly. In the past I’ve (jokingly) accused her of moving the counter with "fake" comments. Well, she wasn’t about to be accused again. With mouse in hand, she scoured through the archives looking for “comment-able” entries. Before too long she had pushed us into “Post Overdue” mode and there we sat. Well, hopefully she learned a lot and was entertained by the entries.

I’m gonna ease back into this with a quote from a song. In the past, song quotes have really only spoken to me during the throes of a big breakup. That time in my life having sailed, music quotes rarely hold the same place in my heart (oh to be a teenager).

With that said, you can always count on Jimmy Buffett to give you something fun. Here’s a quote that really describes me:

I’m a piece of work
I’m iron and lace. I’m shy right up there in your face.

I’m a sweetheart, genius, restless jerk
Lord have mercy -- I’m a piece of work.

Those who know me well can speak to the validity of a bunch of those statements. I particularly like the concepts of “Shy right up there in your face” and being a “sweetheart jerk.”