Like anyone else, I feel sorry for myself a lot of the time. Especially when it comes to work. But something happened to me recently that practically guaranteed that I would never feel sorry for myself again . . . at least when it comes to my career.

Here’s the background:

Although I think I enjoy my job a lot more than most, there are times when I slip on my rubber pants and piss and moan about how hard it is to teach seminars; how unbearable all of my writing deadlines are; how my consulting clients just won’t listen to me.

I’ve been known to curl up on my hotel bed in the fetal position for hours, like a big, fat, hairless Truman Capote, wallowing in whiny self pity.

I had one of those bedwetter moments last week. I taught an in-house seminar on Monday in Dallas, then had to fly to New York City to do the Advanced Writing and Editing seminar on Thursday and Friday. That’s three full seminar days, two travel days, and four flights in five days.

On top of that, I had to make three print deadlines for Ragan while I was running around. Which meant working on planes. Which meant working in hotel rooms instead of drinking room-service bottles of wine and watching movies in my down time.

My GOD, I felt like one of those ice guys in the Depression who had to haul 75-pound blocks of ice up seventeen flights of stairs, day in and day out. I was working so hard, in my own warped mind, that I was making Sisyphus look like a Sissy Puss.

So anyway, the seminar in New York ended, and Mark Ragan—the greatest boss anyone could ever hope to have—tells Jim and me that we should stay an extra night, have a great dinner, and then go see Spamalot on Broadway!

(I’m fairly sure that this sort of thing never happened to those ice carrier dudes, so I’m already loathing myself for being such a screaming crybaby).

So we meet in the hotel bar, have a martini, then go outside to get a cab. Only it’s pouring rain outside. I mean, pouring. So of course, this being New York, there are no cabs.

But there was a “bike cab” available. You’ve probably seen these; all of the big cities seem to have them these days. They’re like rickshaws . . . only instead of the “driver” pulling the passenger on foot, he rides a bike.

Well, one of these bike cabs pulled up to where we were waiting, and offered to take us wherever we wanted to go. The problem, of course, was that the “cab” on these bike cabs is built for two people.

Specifically, these cabs are built for two very small people who have already been sexually involved, and as such don’t mind if their intimate parts rub up against each other.

They are not built for two big, straight men. Which means they really aren’t built for three straight men. Which mean they really, really aren’t built for three straight men when two of those men (Jim and I) are, how shall I say this nicely . . . fat.

But we had no choice. We had to get to the theater district, and walking in the pouring rain wasn’t an option, and going back into the gift shop to buy umbrellas wasn’t an option, because real men don’t go back into “gift shops” and buy “umbrellas” . . . so we were stuck.

And when the bike-cab guy—who was very, very skinny, and who spoke with some kind of heavy Eastern European accent—kept insisting that he could take us, we finally gave in.

I piled in first. Then Mark got in behind me. Already, people on the sidewalk were laughing at us. It’s the closest I have ever been to Mark’s private parts, and I’ve been kissing his ass for 13 years.

Then Jim got in. Now people on the street were howling with laughter. Jim had to sit fully on top of Mark, and half on top of me. His mustache was tickling my ear. Mark’s hand was dangerously close to my groin. His other hand, as far as I could tell, was buried between Jim’s ass cheeks.

It was like something out of the Three Stooges, if the Stooges had ever had a three-way homosexual orgy.

And off we went. This poor immigrant man could barely set the cart in motion. He was giving it all he had, but he probably weighed about 150 pounds soaking wet . . . which of course he was. And he was pulling 680 pounds of fat man meat through a driving rainstorm so we could get to the theater on time.

He could barely do it. I still can’t believe he didn’t have a hernia. Maybe he did. I could have sworn that at one point I saw one of his testicles roll out the bottom of his pants and skitter to the curb.

That’s when I had my epiphany.

I remember thinking, as I watched this man labor through the rainstorm at about two miles an hour, that I had probably just earned more in one day, for talking, than he earned in a month for pulling fat-ass tourists around New York City.

That’s when I vowed to never complain about my job again.

Just as I had my epiphany, the unthinkable happened. A shot rang out. Or at least it sounded like a shot. And as soon as I heard it, our rolling gay orgy carriage veered sharply to the right. You can guess what had happened: We had blown a tire. Our driver wrestled the cab over to the curb, got off the bike, and let out a cry of anguish.

Of course, by this time we were almost at Broadway, so we hopped out, Mark paid him, and we ran through the rain to shelter. Actually, we ran through the rain to this incredible Italian restaurant where we had duck risotto and Florentine T-bone steaks as big as my ass.

But before we got to the restaurant, I made the mistake of looking back. And I saw this man, this hard-working immigrant man who probably sends most of his money back home to Latvia or wherever he was from, standing in the street, the rain streaming off him, staring at his broken livelihood.

I was barely able to choke my risotto down.

If I ever complain out here again about how hard I have it, someone remind me of this story . . . not that you’ll have to, I hope, but just in case.

I’m in New York City, taking a lunch break from the Advanced Writing and Editing class that I’m here teaching with Mark Ragan and Jim Ylisela.

So far, so good. We have 80 people, and it’s a very fun group. I don’t have a lot of time, but I wanted to share two good stories.

The seminar got off to a great start. One of the first people through the doors this morning was a woman from Canada. Specifically, she was from Newfoundland. More specifically, she was from a city in Newfoundland with the wonderfully sexy name of “Come by Chance.”

“Oh, that’s a great place to come from,” I said.

“Yes, and just down the road, about 40 minutes, is the town of Dildo,” she said.

She was dead serious. Can you believe it? Come by Chance is just 40 minutes away from Dildo! Can you imagine the directions that Newfoundlanders give each other?

“Once you get to Dildo, you’re almost at Come By Chance.”

“If you want to get to Come By Chance, you’ve got to go through Dildo.”

Can you imagine being from Dildo?

I, of course, told that story to the entire group, and everybody loved it. That’s how I could tell it was going to be a good group. Anytime you can get the word “dildo” into a professional seminar before the first break, and the audience appreciates it, you know you’re in for a fun two days.

One other good story came out of this morning.

This one guy, Terry, told the group that he had the unfortunate luck to have to report directly to Human Resources. Besides Legal, there is no worse department for a communicator to report to.

Anyway, when Terry saw the brochure for Advanced Writing and Editing, he sent an e-mail to his HR boss, asking if he could go.

As you know, HR people never answer anything straight up. They usually answer questions with questions. And that’s just what Terry’s boss did, sending back an e-mail that read:

“Why do you want to attend?”

Now, if you were Terry, what would you say?

“I 'd like to try and get laid in New York City.”

“I would go to a colonoscopy conference it would get me the hell out of the office for a couple of days.”

“I ain’t got shit else to do.”

Well, Terry didn’t say any of those things . . . but he did manage to take a shot at the boss. His e-mail back to her said:

“Me want to learn how to write better.”

Atta boy, Terry. Stick it to the sons of bitches.

I had one of those Life Moments over the weekend that you hope to never have.

First, though, you need to understand the concept of “Fortuna’s Wheel.”

Cindy and I got the term from our favorite book, A Confederacy of Dunces. Whenever anything goes wrong for the main character, he moans that “Fortuna’s Wheel” is spinning downward . . . in other words, the fates are against him, his luck is bad, his karma is rotten, etc.

It comes from the belief that a blind goddess named Fortuna spins us on a wheel, and that both good and bad luck come in cycles. If the wheel is spinning downward, you’re in for a run of rotten luck.

Whenever things start going wrong at Crescenzo Communications, we always say that Fortuna’s Wheel is spinning downward. “We need to turn Fortuna’s Wheel around,” Cindy will say, after I miss a deadline or irritate a client.

“Fortuna’s Wheel is not in my favor,” I said, after Cindy flat out rejected Crescenzo Communications Corporate Initiative #221, otherwise known as the “Mandatory Sex During Budget Meetings Initiative.”

You get the picture.

Well, Fortuna’s Wheel had been spinning downward for the past couple of weeks. Things just didn’t seem to be going well. Nothing major . . . but a bunch of little, stupid things.

For instance, after I posted my last blog item about blogimpotence, I immediately left the house with my son to go to our boat on Chicago’s Lakefront. The plan was to camp there for two days—what we call a “City Vacation.”

But, being an insecure blogger, while there I was also using my Dingleberry to check to see if anyone commented on the blog. And . . . nobody had. The item had been live for seven hours, and not one single comment.

Of course, I blamed it on Fortuna’s Wheel . . . and not the fact that I had alienated my entire audience by not posting for a week and a half.

But then . . . as always happens, Fortuna’s Wheel started to spin upwards. First, on our way over to Lincoln Park to play baseball, Zach and I happened to notice that admittance to the Nature Museum was free that day . . . and that they were feeding the water snakes! So we got to watch a bunch of snakes in a feeding frenzy, swallowing whole live goldfish. Totally awesome, and very lucky for us that we noticed the sign, that the museum was free, and that we made it in time for the snake feeding. Fortuna’s Wheel started to nudge a little.

Then, when I got back to the boat, I got an e-mail from my friend Elaine, who said she had tried to comment on the blog all day and couldn’t!

It wasn’t me . . . it was the technology! Ragan immediately fixed the problem, and when I woke up Friday morning, there were 17 of the nicest comments anyone could ever hope for. Fortuna’s Wheel was spinning wildly upwards. I could feel it spinning!

Then Zach woke up and told me he wants to sleep on the boat whenever he’s in Chicago. Since I, too, want to sleep on the boat every night I’m in Chicago, this was terrific news.

At one point that morning, I decided that Fortuna’s Wheel couldn’t be any more in our favor. Zach was feeding a tribe of fuzzy baby ducks off the back end of the boat. I had bacon and eggs cooking on the camp stove in the galley. There was a pot of good Guatemalan coffee perking. After breakfast, we were going to walk down to Taste of Chicago, one of our favorite things in the world to do.

And I distinctly remember thinking: “This is why you work. This is what life is about. It doesn’t get any better than this.” The only thing missing was martinis . . . and sometimes, you don’t even need those.

Just then the phone rang. Caller ID told me it was my sister, who was meeting us at the Taste with her daughter. I answered the phone exactly like this:

“There is no better place in the world than right here, in the harbor, right now. I’ve got bacon and eggs on the stove, coffee in hand, the birds are darting around, the weather is perfect, now get your ass down here and take a bite out of paradise.”

“Yeah . . . uh . . . Tommy died last night,” my sister said.

It was one of those moments that change your life forever . . . an exact moment of time you know you will never forget. A frozen moment, I heard someone call them once.

Tommy is my cousin. Was my cousin. He was my 37-year-old cousin with a five-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. He had been battling cancer for a year, and last week he went through a bone marrow transplant.

He had been doing as well as could be expected. The e-mail updates from his wife were positive, and full of hope. He was about one day away from getting out of the hospital and moving in with his mom for a while.

And then he suddenly took a turn for the worse and we lost him.

Right about the time I was worried that nobody was commenting on my stupid blog, Tommy was losing the battle for his life.

The very minute that I was feeling as happy as I could feel, people I love were in agony. Talk about feeling like a shallow, rotten person. Talk about reordering your priorities.

I know I had nothing to do with his turn for the worse, obviously . . . . but does anyone else believe that if you publicly acknowledge how happy you are, you’re asking for trouble?

Does anyone else feel that if there is in fact a God, it’s a mean, spiteful God who looks for true happiness so that he can squelch it? Maybe I’m being superstitious; maybe I’m just being stupid. But from now on, when Fortuna’s Wheel is spinning in my favor, I’m going to keep it to my damn self.

I’m going to tell you the real reason I haven’t been blogging much lately.

I’m going to tell you the truth because this is a blog, which is sort of like a diary, and if you can’t be honest in your blog, you shouldn’t have one.

The reason for the lack of posts out here isn’t because I’ve been too busy, or that I’ve been traveling too much. I have been too busy, and I have been traveling too much . . . but that is when I usually blog the most, because that’s where the best material comes from.

If I’m just sitting on my fat ass at a Cubs game, or at El Jardin’s, or on my boat . . . well, there’s only so many stories you can get out of that. I mean, there’s only so many times you can dip your ass into the holy water basin at a Catholic funeral.

The reason I can even have a blog is because I’m out there traveling and working, and dealing with different companies and communicators all the time. That's where the stories are. So being too busy is not the reason for the lack of posts.

No, the real reason I’ve not been blogging is because I’ve been unable to—both physically and mentally. I’ve been hit with a crippling case of “blogimpotence,” which is a word I just made up. I’ve wanted to blog. I’ve tried to blog. I just haven’t been able to perform.

I’d like to think it happens to all bloggers from time to time . . . but for all I know, I’m the only one who has had to deal with it. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve learned to accept it for what it is.

My blogimpotence started two weeks ago, at a barbeque. I went there with Cindy and Zach, and we had a terrific time. It was a reunion party of sorts, and I saw people I hadn’t seen in years . . . including a guy I’ll call “Andy.” I decided to call him “Andy” because his name is, in fact, “Andy.”

I’ve known Andy since I was born. He’s the younger brother of one my best friends. Andy is also one of the more interesting characters you’ll ever meet. When he was 15, Andy decided that he wanted to hitchhike to California. And just like that, he did.

His brother dropped him off at an entrance ramp to the highway outside Chicago, and off he went. He had a change of clothes, about forty bucks, and a quarter ounce of reefer.

The first guy who picked him up was a pervert, of course. He offered Andy cash money for his dirty socks—the ones Andy was wearing. Andy took the deal, took off his socks, took the cash, and got the hell out of the car. (And we all know what later went into those socks . . . and it wasn’t the dude’s feet.)

Anyway, I haven’t seen Andy in years. He’s married now, with a beautiful wife, two great kids, and plenty of socks.

So I run into him at this BBQ, and after some polite small talk we’re just standing there. Now, Andy has always been a man of few words. If he has nothing to say, he’s one of those remarkable people who can actually just say nothing. He's very comfortable in his own skin.

So he was quiet for about two minutes, then he says to me:

“Haven’t blogged in a while?”

“What?” I said. “What did you just say?”

“Haven’t blogged in a while. Been busy?” he repeated.

I was floored. “You read the blog?” I asked. “Corporate Hallucinations?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “We all read the blog. Funny shit.”

Well, to make a long story short, not only does Andy read the blog, but he occasionally posts comments. And his wife reads the blog. And other people from the neighborhood—people I haven’t had contact with in years and years—read the blog, I found out.

That’s pressure!

And right after that, I got an e-mail from someone else I had never met, saying he really enjoys the blog. And do you know how he heard about it? From Les Potter. That’s right, the Les Potter. For those of you who don’t know Les, he’s a giant in the field of corporate communication.

If there was a Mount Rushmore of communicators, Les would take up two spots, maybe three. He’s my idol. Les lost the ability to walk maybe 30 years ago after a motorcycle accident, but as far as I’m concerned, the man wheels on water.

And God damnit, there’s a chance that he reads the blog.

More pressure!

And to pile it on even further, I’m doing the Advanced Writing and Editing seminar right now, with Mark Ragan and Jim Ylisela, and people keep coming up to me at the seminar and telling me they read the blog. Dozens of people.

Yet again, more pressure!

All of which has shocked me into blogimpotence. Simply put, I cracked under the pressure. I couldn’t handle it. Every time I started to write a post, I didn’t think it was good enough. It wasn’t smart enough for Les. It wasn’t funny enough for Andy. It wasn’t sick enough for the pervert who bought Andy’s socks 30 years ago—who, I was convinced, was also reading the blog.

This post was too unprofessional, that post wasn’t closely tied enough to communications, another post was too tied to communication and wouldn't have any relevance to non-communicators . . . . and on and on and on.

Every post had to be perfect, and none of them were. So I would sit there, wallowing in my blogimpotence like a fat man unable to get out of a chair.

See . . . in my head, I always thought about 40 people read the blog. I have never, not once, asked Ragan for a “hit count.” I’ve never listed the damn thing at the technorati site, which I think increases your traffic. I’ve never blog rolled anybody, whatever that means.

I had my imaginary audience of 40 people, and I wrote for them. For Eileen and Steve N. and Kathy and Rebecca and Jesus I’m starting to sound like the lady from Romper Room.

Anyway, I had my little group, and my little group liked me, and I could write anything for my little group, because if they didn’t like it they were just this little group of people.

So when I began to get a sense that more people read it than I thought—including my brother Chris, who is another guy I’ve idolized my entire life—well, it got to me. I choked. Blogimpotence set in, and I couldn’t perform.

But that’s all over now. After two weeks of this nonsense, I’ve had it. I’m officially taking off the rubber pants and am ready to get back to blogging. And if people don’t like what I write, that’s okay.

When I was a columnist for my college newspaper, a campus group that hated my guts gathered up every copy of the newspaper they could find and, to protest my column, burned them in the street. I had to have sit-down meetings with one campus group or another every other week. I was once threatened with a baseball bat. Once a month, I was called into the dean’s office.

People hated me. Some people loved me and the column, but some people hated me with the heat of a thousand suns.

And I was okay with that.

But this recent bout of blogimpotence made me realize that this blog has made me soft. It has made me worry too much about people liking it, or liking me.

That’s not what a columnist is supposed to worry about. And I’ve always considered this blog to be more of a column than anything else.

So if you had given up on me, please come back. It’s time to get this thing going again.