(Shopping list: Plastic seat cover for computer chair to avoid the issue of a wet seat from running out of the shower with ideas that just have to be typed up immediately.)
The thought struck me, not for the first time, that I live an incredibly dull life.
Sometimes I’ve answered this reflection with a philosophical approach: Just get through it, promise to be more exciting the next go-round. Clichéd version: “Live for today!” (Response: There’s always tomorrow), “You only go around once!” (Response: Maybe in my next life.)
Whatever I happen to be involved in seems to drive every other facet of my life. Right now, getting turned onto what’s being discussed in the New Media course, I’m finding that I’ve been able to both apply and dissect the other hours of the week by what I’m learning in the hours I spend in the clutches of its influence. These guys, the professors, are heavily into the concept of forking paths in life (Thank you, Jorge Borges). Now with the writerly/readerly discussion of Barthes yesterday, I’m wondering if there’s a tie-in with the writer/author (I’m just going to use the term “writer” as someone who dedicates a decent part of their life to writing, okay?) personality and the type of literary efforts they make.
For example, do fiction writers lead basically less exciting lives, but have vivid imaginations that not only give them the creative ideas of story, but keep them satisfied by fantasizing their own lives, i.e., living a more adventurous life in their head while conducting Walter Mitty lives to all observation? Do the people who travel or write journalism live the exciting life and write about it, but have no imagination or secret fantasy world for themselves? Are the paths not taken in reality, actually followed through in the mind? Are we still following them daily in our heads?
But then, there’s Hemingway. And there goes another theory.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology