In actuality, you'd be wrong. Four months is a lot of time, and a lot of things can happen, as I'm currently well aware of. Unfortunately, during that time, the Beer Muse has failed to visit.
The options left available to help me cope with this sudden dearth of inspiration are somewhat limited. I can't even begin to tell you how much I've been struggling to try and find a topic that would support a full page of text, especially one at least nominally associated with beer.
I've missed months before, so the hardcore soul-searching didn't really start until midway through November. I'm pretty sure that Friday the 13 was the actual day that I realized that my problems were larger than I had first suspected. I'm still struggling to resolve issues raised on that fateful day. I won't bore you with the details of the horrors which befell me, but be sure that they were truly horrific.
My immediate reaction to the events of that day were to drink, and see if, as in the past, that would resolve everything. So I gathered a group of people who support my drinking, and we proceeded to do what we do best. In this case, however, instead of turning to the sweet solace of everyone's favorite carbonated beverage, I instead chose a more grape-oriented French carbonated beverage for our refreshment. It was tasty, and after 3 bottles of it, the support group and I were all feeling much better, and proceeded on our way to a more conventional evening spent at a variety of local pubs.
But nothing changed. I should have known not to trust the French.
I spent the rest of November, and the first two-thirds of December in a continued state of dejection and emptiness. At that point I realized that maybe New York just didn't hold the answers I needed. What was necessary was a return to my roots.
Since my roots are in Sweden, it was quite convenient that my family was meeting there this year for our traditional heathen celebration of the winter solstice. The plan was to push myself to the extremes, to really test what I was capable of and what sort of conditions I would be able to endure. The plan was to visit a place known only as a hotel.
The problem with this hotel, was that it wasn't quite like your traditional hotels, which go out of their way to make your stay more luxurious, to keep you comfortable, and to make sure that the conditions were as pleasant as possible for an average human being. This hotel, decided instead that in conditions averaging under zero Fahrenheit outside, keeping it in the cozy mid-twenties range would be sufficient. To their credit, if they had tried to make it more comfortable inside, the hotel would have melted. That would have been a real shame, since in addition to the entire structure we were sleeping in, they had also built the bar completely out of ice. If there's one thing that can make a night of sleeping in 25 degree temperatures more comfortable, its alcohol.
It's been over a month since the solstice now. I still haven't written anything. My grandiose plans have fallen like so much dust around me. It's may have taken 4 months, but I've finally gotten a grand total of 3 or 4 letters from my readers, complaining of my lack of writing. With demand like that, I had to do something. The situation was getting desperate. I couldn't, in good conscience, leave all those people out there waiting, checking the site every day hoping to find the new column, and instead finding the same old crap from October. It would seem that my plan of boring the readers to the extent where they would be compelled to click on ads just to escape had failed as well.
I still don't know what to write. I guess I'll just sit here for another month, waiting for that muse to pop by for a cold beverage. In the meantime, I think I'll finish my scotch.
I'm thinking. Don't bug me.
-- phillip karlsson, brew guru
february 07, 1999