One night in 1993 or 1994, I left work and drove almost two hours south, through back roads and past tree-flanked streams to see the Indigo Girls at Ohio University. After the show, I fought the expulsion of traffic and the weary, sleep-inducing darkness to arrive home a few hours before I had to get up for work the next day.

A few years ago, I sat in the back row, in nearly the last seat to watch Tom Waits rust and hunker and wiggle and slide across the stage.

To date, these are the only two concerts I've ever been to alone.

Tonight, I did something I've never done before in my life, I went alone to watch an author read. And sure, that author was the lusciously witty, immensely talented, charm-your-pants-off Sarah Vowell, whom I'm in love with, whose every word I hang upon. But still, I went alone. That's a huge thing for me these days.

I felt lonely, awkward, there in my little seat with my long arms and large build, there between two couples who could not keep their hands off their partners. I was late, arrived panting and hot. My coat hardly fit across the back of my chair and in slinging it, in bending my limbs triple to ooze out of the sleeves, my keys nearly toppled out and I bumped the lady beside me and the lady in back of me. Later, I had to dig into my pocket to put my parking ticket into my wallet, and then dig again to put it back, and then dig again to turn off my cellphone. I felt like a grizzly bear stuffed into the bucket seat of a Gremlin.

As the lights dimmed, I wondered if anyone close to me knows how often I feel uncomfortable, or that it is the reason I started writing many years ago.

Within seconds, she was on stage in the lights. She didn't stop to greet us, but took the podium and launched into her first story. And I was in love there in the darkness, the same kind of love I used to feel when the projector clicked the soundtrack to life, a love born out of the ability for immersion, obsessive immersion into something I adore, the ability that is only gained by being alone.

At that moment, hands clasped between my knees, entire body bent forward, eyes wide, I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world.

Sarah Vowell is the reason and the inspiration for me to want to explore the essayist format, to feel like I have something to say in that structure, maybe many things, to understand that there is nothing that is not worth hearing if spoken in the right way. Tonight was joy for me. It's not often you get to see one of your inspirations and have them inspire you further.

When I left after an hour and a half, I no longer felt alone. I felt like I was with my best friend, and that maybe he had something to say as well. Maybe he should say it instead of being so afraid to speak and so self-critical of the words he uses and so ready to erase his thoughts.

So I'm returning now to my projects, in the few hours before bed, with one of the most comforting things Sarah said, during her question and answer period. The fact that this comforts me, I think, says more about who I am and what I get anxious about than anything I could write myself:

"People ask me what are my great dreams. I don't have any. My dreams were dumb and I failed at all of them. And that turned out to be a good thing."