Quote:
Originally Posted by LauraLynn
Nope, it's not perfect, but I am VERY lucky. My "previous life" (w/ ex husband) was NOT that great... we just won't go there.
My mind flits from one thing to another... I have to watch myself to be sure I keep on task. Working for yourself at home takes a lot of discipline and I have a little trouble with that.
Reading books allows my mind to "flit" for a little while, but I am able to get back to work after my lunch, etc. (I used to get involved in entirely new projects - particularly online... and then get nothing done!)
Edited to add: I guess it appeared to me that the friend was putting down all people who love to read and that they have boring lives... and that irked me.... so I posted.
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Hmmm .... well, if that's what the original poster's friend meant, he and I should have a loooong sit down. Let's see:
1. Had been around the world by the time I was 17. Even learned how to dig a hole with a paintbrush at Akrotiri.
2. Was frozen to an outhouse seat in Bergen, Norway, in the middle of the freaking summer and had to sit there all night because no one could hear me yelling.
3. Helped a Lapp family bring in their herd and saw the Northern Lights.
4. Got dumped in Kowloon because my mother had a nervous breakdown. They thought my uncle would take care of me .... I don't actually remember seeing him the whole time I was there. I was 2.
5. One of my other uncles was made a KBE. He got me when I was 5.
6. Got stuck staying in a whorehouse one night when I was supposed to be staying in a convent (loose furniture works wonders to block doors).
7. Went on a road trip with a friend who supposedly had the plague. Ended up having an APB put out on us throughout the State of California.
8. Have worked as a doctor and an attorney. Graduated in the top five percent of my class both times.
9. Have 18 cats and 2 wolf-mix dogs.
10. Missed most of second grade sitting in an over sized oxygen tent with a zillion vaporizers in the room. Damn place looked like Dr. Frankenstein's lab;
11. In the last five weeks, I have:
a. Been trapped (well, OK .... they got me out pretty quick) in the flaming wreck of my munched car when a stupid truck did a U-turn in front of me on the highway;
b. Lost a beloved cat to cancer;
c. Flown 1400 miles to get a new car;
d. Drove back with no pain medication (hallucinated dancing bananas);
e. Reconnected with a man I dated in my 20s who is now a major player in social media and schmoozed with a zillion people at South by Southwest;
f. Got either stomach flu or food poisoning; and
g. Had my new car beaten to death by humongous hail stones.
I love to read, but anyone who thinks I've had a boring life is simply and utterly barking mad. Quite crackers. It's not even a working theory. Conversely, I believe that most people are bored (and lead boring lives) because they didn't develop a good reading habit. If they read, they would see that there are whole worlds out there to be explored, both in reality and in the imagination. Books and reading are still the only effective means of time travel out there, and they are an incredibly inexpensive, and generally immensely portable, means of entertainment and escape. They are certainly one of the best ways I see for attaining a good education. Screw teachers, just shovel in the reading material and come back later to test me.
Self-taught for most of the second grade, and when we moved to California (to be near the ocean so I could breathe -- that was the idea anyway), they wanted to skip me several grades because I was reading at such an advanced level.
Eh .... the OP's friend will probably lapse into early senility as a result of allowing his brain to atrophy .... prevention of that is another good result of lots of READING.