Lately, I’ve been spending less time on social media and more time reading and writing. I know I’m missing bouts of fashionable outrage and status signaling, and you know what? I don’t care. You can have it, and you can keep it.
I have read Steven Pressfield’s magnificent The War of Art so many times that I can quote most of it offhand. As I finish City of Mirrors and prepare to start Swimming in Hong Kong, this particular quote kept popping up in my head. I hope you enjoy it, and do check out The War of Art. Mr. Pressfield also runs a blog, Writing Wednesdays. If nothing else, read Find What You Love and Let It Kill You and Collectively-Enforced Mediocrity. You’re welcome.
On to the quote:
In my little house I had no TV. I never read a newspaper or went to a movie. I just worked. One afternoon I was banging away in the little bedroom I had converted to an office, when I heard my neighbor’s radio playing outside. Someone in a loud voice was declaiming “…to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” I came out. What’s going on? “Didn’t you hear? Nixon’s out; they got a new guy in there.”
I had missed Watergate completely.
How’s that for #amwriting?