Never watch anything being made.

They say people who like sausage and respect the law should never watch either being made. I'm here to tell you should never watch anything being made.

For example, if you're familiar with the Children's Place, you know it as the friendly store for sweeeeet huggy lovey kids' clothes like this:

But the headquarters in New Jersey looks like THIS:

Dun Dun DUUUUNNNN.

You don't even want to know what the factories look like.

Nah, I don't know. Even though this onesie is said to be "imported," I don't imagine dark satanic mills cranking out the duckies and bears. I just thought it was funny that the big CHILDREN'S PLACE sign is on a glass building that looks like the kind of place that would make a kid faint from boredom just standing in the lobby.

But you get the idea. The creative process for anything is ugly, dull, and very, very often fruitless. Even, or maybe especially, writing. P.G. Wodehouse was known to make himself laugh, but most comic writers are more like Dave Barry, engaged in strenuous toenail maintenance. S.J. Perelman was known to crank out one slow word at a time, while Thurber just tossed off draft after draft. Either way it would be dull viewing.

There's a reason that there's no Authors Channel, where you watch authors composing at their laptops. You'd enjoy programming from the Emergency Broadcast System more.

You see it at your own job. You know how much crap goes on behind the scenes of every shiny new car, every freshly washed child, every lovely painted wall, every rock-solid contract. It's sausage all the way down. But that's part of the wonder of humanity---we take scattered stuff 'n nonsense and turn it into something grand. (Of course we do the reverse as well, but that's another story.)