So it was exactly a year ago (as of December 2, the day I started this entry) that I told you I was abandoning the Plan. Full-time legislative lawyering, goodbye; part-time lawyering and part-time writing, hello. I thought I'd mark my return from the most recent (unplanned) hiatus by letting you know how it turned out. Well, so far.

My recapping duties had hit a bit of a dry spell in late December, as we were between (waaay between) Amazing Race seasons, and there was a break in Survivor until February. So I proposed to recap this show with Donald Trump that I figured would be good for about four episodes, but would at least keep me working until Survivor came back. I just didn't want to wind up with zero shows for any length of time, because . . . hey, new part-time job, reduction in day job income, you know how it is.

Thus did I take over The Apprentice. Now, when Survivor came back, that meant that I had two shows. Which I figured I could do, because I now had this three-day-a-week work schedule that would accommodate more writing. And then when Deborah didn't want to do West Wing anymore, I agreed to pick that up too, because . . . well, more work is good, and . . . why not, right? Of course, that was before I realized what a drag it is to write a blow-by-blow recap of a show you truly find boring and endlessly repetitive, which I had never done. So I don't do The West Wing anymore. Which is a good thing, because The Amazing Race came back, and fixed its ratings so that they would start showing it during the season instead of during the summer, and now I have . . . yes, three shows. Which is actually fine.

My first piece for TV Guide ran in January. It compared the Survivor All-Star tribes, and I took a stab at laying odds on the victor. While I made a lot of fairly accurate predictions about what would hurt and help certain players, I wound up with just a bit of egg on my face when I basically said there wasn't a chance in hell that Amber would win. Which, of course, caused her to win, so she should really thank me, don't you think? I later did a blurb for them about when Race would come back, wrote about why the All-Stars played a pretty crappy game, covered the new Apprentices . . . and even got to talk to Mark Burnett on the phone. He said "No worries" to me. Really. Oh, and I talked to a Survivor challenge producer, too. So now I write semi-regularly for a magazine my whole family's been getting since I was a kid, and you've gotta like that.

I kept up over at MSNBC, too. Wrote about Captain Kangaroo, bad boyfriends, Airline, Branson, fall pilots, the Emmys . . . oh, and a new thing -- books. I reviewed eight books for the Fall Book Guide and seven for the Winter Book Guide, and I was glad I did that, more than for any other reason, because it got me to read for pleasure, which I haven't done nearly enough of in the last few years. If you haven't read A.J. Jacobs's The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest To Become The Smartest Person In The World, I highly recommend it. It's bright, funny, and a generally great read.

I also wrote about the fall TV season for The Ruminator. I hope to get back to that soon, now that other things have calmed down a little. It's a fine read, as well, and I'm pleased to show up in the same publication as The Vine.

So, yeah, the writing went pretty well.

As I've reported here before, I passed a hundred pounds lost, and started a whole new project about it, which I get to when I can, but damn, I do get busy. It's been incredibly rewarding, hearing from people about their struggles and trials. The rewards of that are really . . . hard to even explain, in that it's like taking the thing that hurts you the most and that has sort of been dragging you down forever -- just forever -- and getting something good out of it. The opportunity to do that is really rare, and I really value it.

And on that note, the other writing news is that I'm going to be in a book. Specifically, I wrote an essay for Erin Shea's Tales From The Scale, which will be out next May, and now that she's listed the writers on her site, I'm sure it's safe to tell you. Erin's site is absolutely tremendous, and I'm a huge fan, and I'm so happy she hooked me up with this project. So you can preorder the book from Amazon.com if you like, or you can just wait till it comes out next spring and look for it then.

For non-writing-related news, see the next entry, which I will try to post in a few days. Or at least before another couple of months pass. I'll put it this way -- my life continues to be amazing. Not because it's so good, or so perfect, or so easy, or so obvious, or so filled with excitement. But because things continue to just happen, all the time, that aren't the things I necessarily would have expected. And whether or not that makes any sense, it's a very good thing. A good way for a life to be.

Number of times it has even occurred to me to miss the job I left: Zero. I feel bad saying that. You feel like you should have regrets, at least tiny ones, at least sometimes. I'm telling you -- zero.