Aside from a few thisses and thats, some heres and theres, I'm inclined to say that the season has been an utter waste -- except that I am not clear on what manner of "productivity" I might have meant to perform. Or what product I should have generated.

I have changed my mind about virtually every big decision I thought I made during the past few months. Move to a new apartment when the lease is up? Not any more. I don't have the energy or the money for that right now. Stay with this company for the rest of my life? Until I said those words out loud I would have guessed yes, but the tiniest amount of thought reveals that this is probably not a sensible decision.

The list of vague annoyances is lengthy. Don't ever let me bore you with such nonsense.

Getting your shit together is like walking along a wide city sidewalk with only one person in front of you. You try to pass the person because he is walking too slow, but somehow you can not pass, no matter how wide the walkway. The person is drunk or crazy (unlike you) and he veers about at random not meaning to get in your way, but doing just that.

This week I became more conscious of these things. Walking along a sidewalk and finding that your pace matches precisely that of a stranger walking beside you. She does not seem ill at ease about the coincidence but you are. Indicating as much would provoke something. You are not sure what. So you walk on, marching through the town.

It reminded me again of the Parc Lincoln Hotel on West 75th Street, where I lived for about a year in 1990 and 1991. For the past several weeks I have called the Parc Lincoln trying to book a room, but they keep saying the place is booked solid for the year, and probably for very far into the future.

I want to go back there and see if it is as I remember, and if my feelings about the place when I lived there still hold true: That times will not always be good, and someday I will probably find myself living in a place like that again.

This is one of the ways I talk myself out of seeing certain people again.

When I moved to New York in 1990 the Parc Lincoln gave me that same line about being booked into infinity, but by showing up at the hotel in person I learned that of course they had empty rooms. At least a dozen.

Today, though, the place is more forbidding to me than in 1990, and with real estate this way they very well might be booked solid.

Anyway, seeing the inside of another transient hotel this week had me waxing nostalgic about those places, about how free I have felt while staying in them, and how interesting it might be now to book rooms at some of them and stay the night, just for the hell of it.

For $35 a night I could go to the opera or sleep the night at a roach-infested asshole like the Parc Lincoln.

It strikes me, too, that this is something I would rather not do alone. So maybe it will just wait.

I know very little about myself. I am always skimming off the top and gnashing sarcastic insights to anyone asking the questions.

Last week I was on a subway platform in Long Island City. A payphone at one end of the platform drew me to it like a magnet and I found myself, for the first time in years, indulging in that old high school past-time of making up toll-free 800 numbers just to see who answered or what was out there.

On the other end were too many companies to remember or even care about. Too many voicemail systems (virtually all of them vulnerable to hacker intrusion), too many unidentifiable organizations and individuals saying hello to my hanging up.

Lately I have re-opened my senses to the fact that most people who appear to use public payphones for conversations and important business do no such thing. They, like me, punch numbers and swat the hook in an effort to look busy and less vulnerable.

Two weeks ago (the last time I sat down to write one of these open letters) at a subway station on 49th Street I saw (and heard) a woman performing this ritual with a credit-card-only payphone.

I knew she was lying with her earnest posture and self-important number-poking and hook-swatting because I know this phone. It has been hacking up that "ACK-ACK-ACK-ACK-ACK" busy-signal-on-steroids noise for weeks. No one has come to fix it. And while this woman spent several minutes looking extremely busy and rifling through her address book and dialing numbers and even speaking a few words I could hear that ACK-ACK-ACK-ACK-ACK echo through the station and drill itself into her ear.

Once I dialed 0 and asked the operator what that ACK-ACK sound was called. She became quite angry and yelled "I have NO idea, get off the phone."

I was 7 or 8, and can not remember anything else about the conversation. But I know that it was the last time I dialed 0 for anything.

Monday night at the Union Square station I watched a teenage girl use a phone for several minutes. She did not deposit any money or do much of anything except work the change-return handle and punch in several sets of meaningless, seemingly urgent numbers.

A train arrived and she slammed down the phone, looking irate and ignored.

I go through this dance all the time. I like the sounds of the automated voicemail systems and the answering machine messages and the elaborate web of options some toll-free numbers make you wade through before arriving at some goal. In a congested subway station these familiar sounds are restful.

I dance the dance with those phones. Lustily stomp up to them. Check for the dial tone, test-push some keys, always dial with the knuckles of my right hand, occasionally the left.

I have to look like something is happening. Busy. I am busy. Important news awaits me down the wire, and my performance must reflect this fact to all those New Yorkers staring.

But last year they did well, and this year they're ranked #1 in the NFC West, and don't think less of me for this but I'm really hopeful for the Bucs and for Tampa to finally get this right within my lifetime.

I still get excited any time I see an interception. Interceptions and the words "This Just In" interrupting your regularly scheduled program.

I'm watching the game now. There is a guy on the Buccaneers named Mark Thomas, and as I am typing this he just made a "wicked tackle" that caused a turnover. Go team.