A Surprising Route to the Best Life Possible - How to have a passionate life

Weekends are a reminder that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it … Italian style Antique  Rosso Antico 

Clovely - ‘People power’: The eastern suburbs tree a neighbourhood saved

 “I don’t like to write but I want to write. Getting up and trudging into that office is just what I do. It’s the daily activity that gives structure and meaning to life. I don’t enjoy it, but I care about it.” 

~ How to have a passionate life 

In one of his novels, “1Q84,” Murakami described that kind of troublesome curiosity: “I’m looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, ‘I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what.’ And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to.”

A Surprising Route to the Best Life Possible

Haruki Murakami was a mediocre student. Like a lot of people who go on to high achievement later in life, the future novelist had trouble paying attention to what the teachers told him to pay attention to, and could only study what he was interested in. But he made it to college, and a few credits before graduating he opened a small jazz club in Tokyo. After a ton of hard work, he was able to pay the bills, hire a staff and keep the place open.

In 1978, Murakami was at Meiji Jingu Stadium in Japan watching a baseball game and drinking a beer. The leadoff batter for his team, the Yakult Swallows, laced the ball down the left field line. As the batter pulled into second base, a thought crossed through Murakami’s head: “You know what? I could try writing a novel.”

He started writing after closing time at his jazz club and eventually sent a manuscript off to a literary magazine — so blasé about it that he didn’t even make a copy for himself in case the magazine lost what he had sent in. It won a prize and was published the next summer. He decided to sell the bar, which was his only reliable source of income, and pursue writing. “I’m the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do,” he wrote in his 2008 memoir.

A Surprising Route to the Best Life Possible

Haruki Murakami was a mediocre student. Like a lot of people who go on to high achievement later in life, the future novelist had trouble paying attention to what the teachers told him to pay attention to, and could only study what he was interested in. But he made it to college, and a few credits before graduating he opened a small jazz club in Tokyo. After a ton of hard work, he was able to pay the bills, hire a staff and keep the place open.

In 1978, Murakami was at Meiji Jingu Stadium in Japan watching a baseball game and drinking a beer. The leadoff batter for his team, the Yakult Swallows, laced the ball down the left field line. As the batter pulled into second base, a thought crossed through Murakami’s head: “You know what? I could try writing a novel.”

He started writing after closing time at his jazz club and eventually sent a manuscript off to a literary magazine — so blasé about it that he didn’t even make a copy for himself in case the magazine lost what he had sent in. It won a prize and was published the next summer. He decided to sell the bar, which was his only reliable source of income, and pursue writing. “I’m the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do,” he wrote in his 2008 memoir.

No longer doing the physically demanding work of running a bar, he started to put on weight. He decided to take up a sport, and running seemed like a good option: There was a track right by his house, running didn’t require fancy equipment and he could do it by himself.

 The people who still use typewriters

Booksellers In France Protest Media Dominance By Placing Publisher’s Books On Lower Shelves

“Books matter,” said Thibaut Willems, owner of Le Pied à Terre independent bookshop in Paris’s 18th arrondissement and one of the booksellers taking a stand by limiting their orders of Hachette Livre books and placing them on lower shelves. - The Guardian

Are There Too Many Books Being Published? Too Much Noise In The Clutter?

 More than 2.6 million books were self-published in 2023 – many of which are uploaded to the dominant platform, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing – and they can’t all be masterpieces. Nevertheless, the idea that self-publishing is the preserve of hopeless hobbyists producing books no one wants to read is at least a decade out of date. - The Guardian

Grandparenting So much better than parenting

  George Bernard Shaw once commented that youth is wasted on the young, and I have to say the old boy definitely got that one right.

As a young person I had no thought of time; hours and days passed when I did nothing. Often staying in bed until lunchtime I thought time was a never-ending commodity, I had it in spades, it was infinite.