When In Doubt, Read. It Hit Me Last Night, My Motto Has Always Been, "When in Doubt, Read."

I'm not the only one. I find safety in that. And I am thinking about Oprah here, because I remember an episode she had on emotional eating, and I recognized that there's truth to that...at certain times, with certain emotions, one simply can turn to food for comfort.

Last night, after attending a Stags game and going to dinner...and after processing the out-of-the-ordinary news of Kobe Bryant's death (along with his daughter and others), I simply wanted to curl up with a book. I just finished We Are Displaced this morning, a selection of refugee stories from girls around the world, and have a pile of 13 other books I want to get to by my birthday. When I got to Mt. Pleasant, I let the dog out, folded the laundry, and simply sat in my Crandall chair to read.

That's what I do. That's my escape. That is where I've always gone to find comfort when my brain is a little topsy-turvy with thinking.

It should be noted that I'm not a NBA fan. I may have seen 2 or 3 NBA games in my life. I am, however, a NCAA fanatic, and I can lose days upon days with college basketball. Once it's "professional" I lose interest. So much hype, so much celebrity, so much fandom and so much money. I respect it. I get it. But I don't necessarily contribute to it. I do, however, know an icon when there's an icon. I too shoot wadded papers into the air to my wastebasket yelling, "Kobe!" - this, I imagine, is because of the gaming systems that the boys have played in my house for the last decade+. I picked it up from them. A hero is a hero because the heroism is deserve.

The news hit me like I lost a student (and I have many stories where this has happened). The unexpected whacks me upside my head and I think, "How can this be?" I think of one young man who lost his life in his senior year and my friend, Charlie, said driving on the highways of Kentucky, "It's all so random...so @#$@#ing random."

That's the only thing we can say when we have no meaning to give.

My head was already spinning with news, and truths, and not truths, and my sense of morality and goodness verses the lack of morality and goodness of others, before the news came out.

That's why I needed a night off with books. I actually sat down to read advanced reader copies of books coming out in 2022. I wanted to think optimistically ahead to a time that might be...can be...hopefully will be possible. My mind is not good with the world right now. History has made sense, for the most part, but today and the last few years have me intellectually in the washer and dryer.

Sometimes I just need to read to calm myself down.

So that is what I did. What I do. 2.5 books in one day. And not feeling guilty at all.