This morning, my cat Merlin died.

Eleven years ago, a gray tabby kitten followed a 32-year-old man who was taking his three-year-old and one-year-old boys on a walk in their wagon. The kitten walked half a mile behind them, looking them in the eyes and yowling the whole time. This man and his boys had recently lost another wonderful cat, run down in the road because he had followed them across the highway in front of their house. The 32-year-old decided if this little gray creature followed them across the same road, he–the man–would have to adopt him–the kitten.

He–the kitten–did, and he–the man–did.

Merlin arrived while I was writing my novel Mad Merlin.

Merlin was a remarkable creature. He looked humans in the eye. He spoke to them. We had a neighbor that we rarely spoke to but that Merlin often did because he saw the man through the window and struck up a conversation. Merlin even consoled the heart of an eighty-pound border collie who was still mourning her last cat.

And later, when the collie was gone and we adopted another cat, Merlin became a father to the new creature. Three years later, Merlin did the same for a third cat–Sherlock.

Sherlock arrived while I was writing my Sherlockian novel, The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls.

Yes, authors measure their lives in books and cats.

Two days ago, the eleven-year-old Merlin was avoiding us. One day ago, I held him in my lap as I worked on a novel, and he endured my touch only a couple minutes before leaping away and withdrawing beneath the dresser. This morning, Merlin was having seizures. An hour later, my wife and I stood beside a stainless steel table while a vet shaved Merlin’s arm and found a vein and put in the juice that would kill him.

Merlin died this morning.

This was the kitty who followed me home. This was the one who looked me in the eye and spoke to me. This was a living soul.

Some would balk. They would say the death of this cat shows how nobody really has a soul. Cats and people are just bodies with consciousnesses riding them. When the bodies fail, the consciousnesses are gone. Souls are simply wish fulfillment.

But there’s another thought here. It’s not that animals prove we are nothing but meat. It’s that we prove that animals are more.

Merlin knew how to speak to me. Maybe it was because he was a writer’s cat. He spent so many hours on my lap as I wrote novel after novel. He had no one to talk to except me and my bereaved collie, so he learned to talk to us, both. Merlin proved that he and all cats have a soul–or none of us does. 

Rest in peace, my friend, Merlin. My life was richer that you were in it and is emptier that you aren’t anymore. And when it is my turn to be lying on the towel, gasping, biting my tongue, I will take some comfort to know you have done this before me and found out what awaits us all.

To wrap up these Twelve Days of Greenwood, I thought it would be fun to ask Ed a bunch of rapid-fire questions ala Inside the Actor’s Studio. Here are my questions and his responses:

What is your favorite word?

I haven’t got a favorite word, but I like to slip certain words into most of my novels, just for fun. As well as resurrecting odd or archaic words (not current “jargon,” but words that were once more popular than they are now, like “thus” and “whom” as well as far more exotic words). I love the sounds of language, words that “sound cool.” Stroll through a good thick physical dictionary (Oxford, for choice) for a few pages, to see what words turn up that appeal. I do it all the time.

What is your least favorite word?

Again, I haven’t got one, though I’m close to deeming it to be “basically,” considering all the idiots I hear who use it instead of—or even as well as!—“um.”

What is the best sound in the world?

My wife rolling over and saying happily, “Good morning, lovey.”

What is the worst sound?

Someone sobbing in grief, whom you know you can’t comfort.

If you could change one fact of life, what would it be?

That money, or lack of enough of it, governs so many life choices.

If you had an afternoon to spend with Elminster in the real world, what would the two of you do?

Knowing Elminster, he’d want to spend time browsing my books, eating various ice creams, and sampling all sorts of drinks (mundane, not just alcoholic). Oh, and he’d probably want to see some “handsome lasses,” too.

What does Elminster think of Ed Greenwood?

That Ed Greenwood is a wimp and a gossip, but an essentially nice fellow, who is, as they say, “mostly harmless.” And who’d not last ten breaths in the Realms, without good strong guardianship. He’d probably comment, if asked his opinion of me by me, something along the lines of, “Well, at least ye can read.”

Which of your many accomplishments makes you proudest and why?

My proudest accomplishment is making so many friends because the Realms, or my other writings, gave them pleasure. Plain and simple, that’s it. Putting joy into someone else’s life is the biggest achievement I can think of, and the one I get the most charge out of. It’s not about my greatest book, because I don’t think I’ve done any great books (yet, my pride adds in a tiny voice), or about my favorite, because I don’t have one. Really. It’s about the joy, the diversion, the fun, of touching other minds.

With such a voluminous output—over 30 published novels and 180 published game products—I thought for sure Ed would have a favorite. But Ed is not so much about novels or games, but moments. He enjoys wherever he is and whatever he’s doing. Here’s his response:

I really don’t have a favorite novel. I could be flippant and say “My latest one” or “the one I’m working on” is always my favorite, and I do hope I’m getting better as a writer, story after story. I have some favorite scenes (like the wedding night scene you enjoyed in Elminster: Making of a Mage), and some books that I enjoy more than others because of the topics or how they turned out, but I really don’t have a favorite. Reeeeeally. I have a collection of highlights I especially like, from various of my novels and collaborative novels, but no one favorite.

Your question as to “why” something is a favorite is part of the reason for a broad collection rather than one “best” choice; I like various scenes or passages for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s writing that shines more than my other prose, sometimes it’s just because I managed to get closer in the squiggles of ink I put on the page to what I was imagining in my head, and more often it’s because of the content of a scene. Coupled with pulling the scene off vividly and glibly, for once. :}

As to games, I don’t have any clear favorites, either. On some days, I’d point at the “Old Gray Box” initial Forgotten Realms boxed set, which is where the Realms line of game products all began. On other days, I’d plump for FR1/Waterdeep and the North, for the admittedly small slice of that city it managed to present to gamers and writers (from which we got Elaine Cunningham’s superb novel Elfshadow, and its sequels). I’ve always been partial to the Volo’s Guides series, which added local lore and recipes and bitchy restaurant reviews to the mix of Realmslore, showing everyone that world building was more than armies and supervillains and castle-blasting spells. Sometimes I lean towards the Forgotten Realms Adventures tome, with all of its maps and local highlights, plus new spells. On other days, it’s Undermountain, my old and vast “endless dungeon,” with its deliberate atmosphere of litter, mystery, treasure, and bones, all left from those who’ve been down here before you. And so on. With Castlemourn I was able to present my own new setting in one hardcover tome, crammed full of interesting adventure settings (more kingdoms than I ever had the opportunity to get around to detailing with the Realms, where company plans always seemed to stand in the way of detailing Impiltur, Turmish and the cities of the Vilhon, Aglarond, the Wizards’ Reach, and so on, and kept Amn and Rashemen and Var the Golden and many other places in the “covered once over, very lightly” category.

Once again, I can’t pick any one favorite, because so many different facets.

Ed Greenwood is a treasure trove of experience for young, aspiring writers. I asked him to give his advice for what aspiring writers should do—and not do:

Writers should . . .

Read. Read, read, read. Not so you can copy stuff, but so you can experience all sorts of styles of writing, so you can learn what’s popular now, what’s falling out of popularity, and what’s rising into popularity. I never learned much formal grammar, but my writing and spelling are far superior to most of what I encounter in modern writing. And I read so darned many good writers of the past (Kipling, Wodehouse) that I can fall into their styles and cadences if I want to. Reading also shows you, even unconsciously, how writers handle scenes such as funerals or angry confrontations, how they describe places and characters at the reader’s first contact with them, how they cover the passage of time, how they draw the reader in to see and feel and smell a place, and dozens of other elements of storytelling. You can learn a lot about pacing or when and how to use humor without even noticing you’re learning it, if you read enough, and widely enough. You can also learn a lot of useful facts without ever setting foot in a boring classroom, too.

That’s step one. Step two is: write, write, write. Lots, and do not avoid rewriting your own stuff. Don’t think it’s carved in stone because you wrote it, but don’t delete it constantly, either. Keep your prose, even when you wince at it. Rewrite it without destroying earlier versions; try scenes from different viewpoints or at different lengths—play around with words.

Writers write. Only a few of them put on funny jackets and stick pipes in their mouths and give lots of interviews—or lectures, for that matter. Your worst book is the one you never wrote, not anything you have written. Get your backside on a chair and your fingers on a keyboard and write. I went to university and got a journalism degree not to become a journalist, but to train myself to write in noisy conditions of many interruptions and distractions, not when I was alone, in my favorite slippers and in the right chair, with my mind “just so.” And it worked. I wrote most of a chapter of my current book with a pencil and pocket notepad because I was ten minutes early to a restaurant dinner, a week ago—the way I used to write in the old days. I’ve also written three novels, two full-length game books, and a raft of magazine articles and short stories all in the same year (and all of them subsequently got published), because I get on with it. During my most productive years of Realms writing, I was commuting a hundred miles to work six days a week, working an eight-hour day, then driving the same distance home (to an old farmhouse that needed its share of running repairs).

So I tend to reject claims of “Oh, I’d like to be a writer, but I just don’t have the time.” Horse-puckey, to put it politely; it can be done. I’m not advocating an arms race; if it takes you four years to write a good book, take four years, because I like to read good books. If you want to make a living at your writing, though, it’s best if you can write slightly more than one book a year.

Writers should NOT . . .

Stop reading or stop living or fall into routines because life is too busy. The worse the input into your brain, the worse your output. You stand in peril of starting to write dull “same as the last one” books. From cooking something new (or learning to cook!) to looking around a different country (even if only on television), make sure there’s always input in your life. Feel overwhelmed and bombarded by new stuff? Learn how to control what’s coming in, to take time to think. Go visit an old barn and just tramp around smelling and looking (haven’t got one? find a pioneer museum and get away from the guided tours).

If you bog down on what you’re writing, start something else that’s different. Keep multiple things “on the go” all the time, even if you never intend to finish them all and just use them as “breathers” from your main writing work. As the old adage insists, “A change is as good as a rest.”

The world of gaming has undergone huge transformations over the last fifty years, and the Forgotten Realms has appeared in just about every gaming format that has come into being. I asked Ed what he felt the future of gaming was:

When I was young, wargaming was men moving painted model soldiers around a sandtable (or small cutout silhouettes of dreadnaughts around gymnasium floors) with yardsticks. Roleplaying games existed only in the form of “matchbox” off-map movement and umpires relaying sometimes-faulty reports to gamers playing at being the opposing General Staffs, to represent the fog of war. Even the hexagonal gaming board and real-battle simulation rules were in the future. Video gaming and computers weren’t even heard of. (And the world was black and white, and everyone walked about with fast, jerky movements, and . . .)

Roleplaying games were the first “big thing” in gaming during my lifetime, and they are a classic game form that will never die out, for the same reason that the classic board and card games from decades or even centuries ago will never die out; they are a pastime one can share with friends or family, something to do together. On an admittedly rarer and rarer basis, as the pace of life becomes ever-faster and gaming alone, something that has always held appeal for the social misfits among gamers, becomes not only easier and widespread, but an increasingly satisfying game experience (we’ve moved past crude arcade games, and computer games where the pixels were so large and blotchy that it was hard to even see what you were doing, as you played, to online gaming and immersive computer games with visuals that approach television and film quality, and we can now play on mobile phones—one more assault on the handy paperback book that used to dominate subway and bus daily commuting to work). I see the visuals, and the sophistication of game play, continuing to improve, and I also see the flexibility and capacity of networking (playing with friends via the Internet, in electronic gaming environments) continuing to improve.

Yet I don’t see these improvements “killing” roleplaying games and board games, just as film and television haven’t “killed” radio. There will always be a market for fun, visually attractive, fast and simple to play games for the family to enjoy together, a thirst for more complex one-on-one contests like chess, and smaller markets for more sophisticated board games that take longer to master and play. Give me a really satisfying game that can be played in an hour, for two to five people, that doesn’t necessarily emphasize violence over cooperation, and I can always find you people who will enjoy playing it. As a focus of socializing, games (which are, after all, just organized-with-rules forms of “play” that children all engage in) will never die out.

I have a great nostalgia for the crazy environment of TSR, back in the day (which I visited annually, but was never part of, as an employee), but for me, that’s missing a collection of people, not missing a building or a corporation or “the state of gaming back then.” Gaming is a creative industry that’s always driven by new ideas and improvements of classic games, and I have always been—and always will be—excited to be a part of it. Shopping at GenCon every year is still an annual highlight that I await eagerly.

Book publishing is undergoing a tremendous transformation as the world goes digital. Some people are predicting the end of the novel (not a new prediction). As an author and as a librarian, Ed has a unique perspective on the state of the industry, which he elaborates here:

The publishing industry certainly is changing, and more and more rapidly, too. The problem is, as Google and Amazon and various other players all introduce new technologies and business models, and the established (“New York”) publishers try to adjust or cling to their traditional business models, no one knows what the future will look like.

Some trends of the last few decades are continuing: bricks-and-mortar stores are becoming fewer, midlist authors are having a tougher and tougher time making a living from publishing their works, profit margins are under attack, too many books are chasing too few readers, the audience is growing (ever-greater population) but becoming more shallow (an ever-smaller percentage of that growing audience habitually reads book-length printed narratives for pleasure), and ever more formats of storytelling and other pastimes are competing for scant leisure entertainment time in ever-faster lives.

I frankly don’t know what the future is. As a railway baron of Canada’s past once famously remarked, “How should I know? My balls aren’t crystal.” I do think that all novelists (and editors, and publishers, and booksellers, and librarians) can no longer afford not to pay attention to the ongoing changes. Life is a journey, not a destination, and so is any literary career. If we just wait and see, changes will happen to us. If we participate, we can at least play a part in deciding where we go over the falls. :}

I edited a number of Ed’s early novels, including Crown of Fire, Elminster: Making of a Mage, and The Temptation of Elminster (once entitled Elminster in Hell), as well as a trimmed-down edition of his first novel, Spellfire. But he’s also worked with many other editors over time. I asked him what makes for a good author-editor working relationship:

I have indeed worked with many editors, after 180-plus projects with scores of publishers. A good author-editor relationship is built on mutual respect and trust, so the author end of it has confidence in the judgment of the editor, and the way in which the editor will treat the story. Some authors start their own publishing houses just to get rid of editors standing between their story and the way they want it presented, and many more authors gripe about editors and build up a collection of horror stories (yes, I have mine, and no, you don’t feature in any of them except the trimming of the second version of Spellfire, which I think you did very well and which I hold you blameless for).

I think the root cause of such a relationship going sour is always a failure to communicate properly or fully. Sometimes that in turn is caused by a greater deceit (the author presenting someone else’s work as their own, or the publisher deliberately not informing the author that their story is going to be changed, leaving the editor as scapegoat or hatchet-wielder), and sometimes it’s a malice-free black comedy of errors and misunderstandings (example: the Electric Light Orchestra rock album entitled No Answer, which got its title when the record label secretary phoned the band to find out what they wanted the record to be called, couldn’t reach anyone, and wrote down “No Answer” on her steno pad).

Good editors steer authors, and discuss issues to draw out the best possible story. They do not rewrite the author’s prose, or force endless rewrites on the author’s part, to try to bring about the story they (the editor) would have written if they’d been given the book slot or writing assignment, instead of the author who did get it. Good writers can make good editors, but not by trying to get other writers to write “their way.” Except in situations (government manuals, perhaps) where a “house voice” is desired, the author’s voice should shine through the published book. (You managed the trick of preserving my voice in the Spellfire edit, which is why I think the result is a success, though it still doesn’t match the “and expanded” claim on the book cover. :} )

In many cases (editing any independent story anthology, for example), the editor has a perfect right to accept only an end result that fits their needs; if the writer doesn’t deliver a mystery story about left-handed telephone repairmen for a mystery anthology featuring left-handed telephone repairmen, or refuses to revise a draft that uses only right-handed characters, the failure belongs at the author’s door.

In less clear-cut cases, the best relationship always develops when the editor makes it clear to the writer at the outset what the needs and expectations are (“we only have a room for a 3,000 story, so please don’t hand in one of your usual 14,000-word-with-no-ending-in-sight masterpieces!”), and the two stay in communication often enough during the process that the writer isn’t hampered by having to make many partial turnovers or progress reports, but does feel as if the editor cares, and that they’re not creating alone, in an uncaring vacuum. If I as a writer like and respect my editor, then I’ll react far more favorably to last-minute pleas to lengthen or shorten a story, or to add in a princess with an elephant snout and angel wings to the narrative because the cover art just came in, and darn it if there isn’t such a sweetie front and center on the thing, cuddling the hero.

Editors and writers don’t have to be friends, but it sure helps. They do have to feel that they’re on the same team, rather than being antagonists.

“Escapism” is a dirty word for many critics of fantasy, but it is not to Ed. He echoes the sentiments of Tolkien and Lewis, who saw fantasy as a means of “moral recovery” and the release of imagination from its everyday chains. Here’s what Ed had to say:

The hardest element of real life for most of us to deal with is death. After that, rejection, poverty or economic insecurity, unfairness, disagreement with our ideas/views/positions, pressure/lack of sleep/lack of time, and inability to pursue what we want or are interested in, tend to be the daily devils for most of us in North America.

All fiction can be an escape from real-life troubles and pressures, and fantasy fiction more sharply than most fiction because it can depict clearer good and evil, and demonstrate—by the slaying of clearly identified, non-elusive monsters, and through the agents of our strong arms or our whizzbang spells—swift and decisive action, retribution, and the making of moral choices. In short, we can play the hero or identify with the hero, we can see evil vanquished and take comfort in that, and we can be what we can never be in real life (abandoning a real wheelchair or plain looks or lack of athleticism to be the popular, sought-after, agile, or mighty).

As a shared world, the Realms can be all sorts of escapes for all sorts of readers (and players, and designers, and artists, and miniatures sculptors, and so on). So yes, I have created a vast basket that can hold all sorts of escapes and satisfactions and aspirations. Yet it’s strong because it isn’t a one-story world; it isn’t all about one single quest and isn’t one ego-satisfaction. Because it’s varied and colorful and home to a host of stories, it feels more real than “The Land of Make Believe” of a simple child’s fairy story . . . so the achievements, including the escapist ones, that a reader gains from interacting with the Realms feel greater. (The trick is not to arrange or state things for too-swift, too-easy, too-simple gratification; “instant gratification” is very swiftly realized, and its results last very fleetingly, because we mentally just don’t value it as much as something won in a more long and hard process.)

Years ago, my young friends and I eagerly awaited each new Amber novel (of the original Corwin quintet) by Roger Zelazny, speculating as to which family members were behind what intrigue or action, and why. We all knew it was fictional, and we weren’t identifying with any of the characters, yet we were taking great delight in what might unfold in the next book, in the possibilities. That in itself was an escape from the overall boring powerlessness of our high school lives, the mundane irritations of being teens at the bottom of society’s hierarchy. We could leave our real-world lives behind for a few minutes, and be part of something exciting that mattered. Even if only to us, and only in our heads. That’s a part of what all fiction does.

Some folks use “escapism” in a pejorative sense, but I believe doing so is almost always a grave mistake. Make-believe and play are part of what humans do, to cope with life, and therefore escapism is a part of human lives, and part of what it is to be human.

I asked Ed for a funny story that involved publishing personalities, and he regaled me with this hilarious gem:

Some years back, I collaborated on a semi-secret rescue job, for free, finishing a novel by a prominent male writer who’d died suddenly (so his widow and family could get the royalties from his last book). My collaborator was his longtime in-house editor, a rather homely and forbidding “old pro” of long experience, much older than me. The book was quite steamy, and at the outset she requested that I leave handling all the sex scenes to her, as (being in-house) she knew exactly what would be acceptable, and a lot of time and grief could be saved. That was fine with me, and I got to work and had the thing done very quickly. Whereupon her boss, the publisher, demanded the draft MS to read over.

The editor handed it over, and he read it and hit the proverbial roof at how explicit the sex scenes were (spankings, bondage, whippings, and hanky-panky in public on the hood of a car were all involved, as I recall). He assumed they were my work, but at that point I hadn’t even seen them. The guy didn’t roar at me. Instead, he invited me down to an editorial meeting in his boardroom, intending to humiliate me by having me read aloud select passages (of his choosing; the “worst” of the sex scenes, of course) in front of his head of marketing, his head editor, the editor I was working with, some of his company’s board of directors, and so on. Whereupon he could launch into a tirade, kick me off the project (charity work for me, remember) and ride to the rescue of his dead author’s memory.

I showed up, and read the scenes (which I was seeing for the first time) aloud with gusto, giving my hammy, all-too-breathy character voices and a compelling “Radio Award Style” narration—which of course made the publisher absolutely purple with rage.

He let fly at me—and was rather taken aback by how much his “disapproving” staff loved the steamy scenes.

Then he was really shattered to learn that the offending scenes had been written by his staid old staff editor. His face was screamingly funny.

She even smiled at him sweetly and informed him in a carefully neutral voice that she’d really enjoyed doing all the necessary research.

I then rescued the guy by gushing about how inspiring it was to meet a publisher who cared so deeply about the quality of his books and the memory of the dead author he’d worked with for so many years, and pumping his hand, and telling him how I’d never forget this moment.

“Neither,” one of the board members told the ceiling rather loudly, “will we.” Most of the staffers around the table were fighting to keep from bursting out laughing, and one of the worst mischief-makers among them even demanded I read one of the scenes again.

This time I adopted the voice and manner of a respectable and naïve radio announcer, beginning with polished confidence and then faltering and getting doubtful as he went on into the more explicit moments, and the whole room—the publisher included—ended up rolling around shouting with mirth. Whereupon the publisher decided to save face by taking us all out for lunch, and a good time was had by all.

The editor is long retired, and our paths didn’t cross often after that hilarious occasion, but she always greeted me with mimicry of my respectable but doubtful radio announcer voice, suggesting haltingly that “We really must get together for some necessary research.” Then she’d snort and we’d talk. Yes, the book got published. No, none of our names was ever associated with it. Which is as it should be, though if you don’t mind ruining a steamy book you’ve already enjoyed, please remember that it can always serve as entertainment again by declaiming the sex scenes aloud for an appreciative audience.

All the years I have known Ed, he has exhibited a kind of free-floating delight, a zest for life that I have always admired. I asked Ed whether this gusto was simply a character trait, or whether it was a conscious decision. Here is Ed’s illuminating response:

Ah, this is a big, important topic. I do delight in life, and yes, it is a conscious choice.

My mother died when I was six, and I grew up painfully shy, as well as being the stereotypical bespectacled nerd, much bullied at school. I entertained myself (mainly by reading, but also by people-watching, mainly older people) for hours and hours, alone, and did not have a “happy childhood.”

Because of the loss of my mother, in my early years I was raised by grandmothers and aunts assisting my father, and they were much older, wiser people who were beginning to feel their ages, and who had spent lives forced in various directions by two world wars with the Depression in between; they used to say such things to me as “Every day that passes is one day of your life gone, that you can never have back.” and “So many marched away, and never came back. They never got to have lives, they died before they could marry or climb their mountains. Whatever you want to do, do it now, don’t put it off; the day may never come.”

One of my uncles (actually a cousin, but so much older than me that he was a “courtesy uncle”) was Uncle George, or W.G. Hardy, a distinguished Canadian writer of historical novels and the bicentennial history of the Canadian province of Alberta (he was the first chancellor of the University of Alberta). I remember him as a great guy, full of (true) stories about driving around the Mediterranean with Hemingway and all sorts of other capers from his youth. He told me more than once, “You can write about it better if you’ve done it. So drive a speedboat, paddle a canoe, parachute jump, paint a painting, gallop on a stallion, make love on a tombstone—oh, and don’t tell your parents I told you any of this.”

I decided that this was great advice, and as my (dragged along regardless of my wishes, initially) participation in a church choir had begun to get me over acute stage fright and used to performing in public, I decided to try all sorts of things, and not to shy away from having to do anything. An approach to life that has led me to try all sorts of crazy things, nearly get myself killed any number of times, and happily ham it up in public, from hosting on-air radio shows to acting to giving speeches at big conventions (for bookselling and for sf and for librarians, not just gaming). The more I participated in life with jovial gusto, the more fun it all was, and the more fun I brought to other people. So long as I stayed sensitive to when people just wanted to be alone or quiet or to rest, I could brighten up their day by what I said and did, by being “up” and positive rather than morose.

And, by jingo, it works! You can drive people nuts by irritating them as an overly loud “Cheerful Charlie,” yes, but you can also cheer people up and make friends more easily and be good company—and it makes everyone happier. And you know, I don’t think there’s a higher calling in life, than making lots of people happy by being kind to them, by being friendly, by lending an understanding listening ear, by helping out when you can.

At more than one GenCon, I’ve taken painfully shy people, as I once was (and really still am, inside), and just casually towed them over to meet game writers and designers or just folks in striking costumes they’ve been “dying inside” to meet, but were too shy to approach. It’s wonderful to make someone’s day, it really is—and although conventions can be physically exhausting, the emotional boost I get from making others happy makes me happy for weeks afterwards. Literally.