The time I almost met John Prine -- or -- 'Hello In There'.

He was standing on the opposite side of the glass, his hair hanging lank across his head in the Dominican humidity. Could it be him?

I thought I'd seen John Prine walk by as I lounged by the resort pool, sipping the umpteenth beer of the afternoon. My senses dulled by alcohol and idyllic setting, I couldn't be sure. Plus, the sight of the man, whom I heard as a voice of the snowbound Midwest, seemed incongruous with the tropical setting. But later in the week, there he was again, closer this time, one of my favorite songwriters in the flesh -- just on the other side of the glass door.

I smiled a thin smile that he must have interpreted as a sign of recognition, because he thought twice about coming into the resort office and instead walked on. I couldn't blame him. I gathered our luggage and went to meet our ride to the airport. As I took in the last vestiges of paradise before getting back on a plane for frigid New Jersey, I saw him milling about the resort entrance. I thought about approaching him. 

But what is there to say to someone like him, someone who has lived more in a three-minute song than most people have in a lifetime. In hind sight, it's easy. You say thank you. And I regret not saying it.

Inside the octagon.

I'm reading a book called The Professor in the Cage. It's about a college English professor who, fed up with his stalled career, decides the best way to get himself fired is to join the MMA gym that's just opened across the street from his office, and write about hardening himself to fight inside the octagon.

The book raises a lot of intersting questions about masculinity and violence. Thematically, It also addresses the life unlived.

The author, Jonathan Gottschall, says one of his primary motivations for writing the book was to figure out if he was actually a coward. After a liftime of shying away from physical confrontation, would he panic when the cage gate was bolted shut?

I'm following Gottschall's tale with the same rapt attention of a top-tier MMA bout. Here is somebody who's not content with the live unlived. We all have our octagons. Not all of us step inside. 

The life unread.

As an unpublished author, I feel like I'm not in any position to be giving advice on writing. For the most part, I'll be sticking to providing fuel for creative endeavors. But this is a subject on which I feel comfortable giving advice.

You're not reading enough. As someone who makes a living reading, the experience has strengthened my approach when I switch to the other side of the desk. My best teachers are other writers.

When I read, plot is secondary to the workings of the complex machinery that the author has put to paper. I want to know what about her prose is making me feel a certain way. Or how he captures the nuance of a New York accent. Or why she's turned her back on adverbs. To put it another way, I read like a painter might look at a painting in a gallery. Instead of gazing from a comfortable distance, I'm up close, examining the brush strokes.

Why aren't you reading more books? Blame the internet-connected device you're holding. Put it down and read something. You'll feel better and you'll learn something about how this complex machine runs.