Today I feel like I hit a little bit of a road block. The last few days really. I want to write more but I’m feeling terribly indecisive. Everything I start writing I get tired of after a paragraph or two. The truth is that I’ve been distracted. Distracted by the media mostly. I can’t stop reading articles about politics and philosophy and sports and movies and other things I think I’m interested in. The irony is that it’s important to read a lot if you want to get better at writing. Reading the work of professionals and writers you admire should inspire you to improve your craft. The problem is my reading hasn’t been very focused and that’s sort of scattered my thoughts. I did finally finish the To Have and Have Not book by Hemingway. It was a bit on the long side but I guess he’s done a lot of living and has a lot of stories to share. Although filled with vivid writing and peopled with memorable characters, the book is weak as a novel. In fact, Hemingway was on record as saying that...

When I was in 7th grade I got suspended from the football team for doing something dumb. I mention it now because it’s one of those random events that’s had a kind of outsized impact on my life. One day I was on the street with a friend of mine when he pulled a dyeing pack out of his pocket it, waved it at me and said, “look at this.” He twisted one end of the packet several times and then threw it to the ground. The dyeing sprayed everywhere. For a 12 year old boy, this is very cool. We immediately went to hardware store to get more supplies. We threw these little dyeing bombs around the neighborhood, all the while making a mess without much regard for public property. Soon we rushed back to school to show the rest of our friends. Somehow we ended up in the locker room, probably because we knew we’d be away from any teachers. I demonstrated the twisting technique neccessary to get the right amount of pressure in the little packet for it to explode properly. I proceeded to throw three...