One book where I use my eyes, one book where I use my ears a month for the entirety of 2024 and then I'm solid. Well 34 days into the year, I'm right on target. In fact, I may be 2 ear books ahead of schedule. I'll use this space to talk about what I read. Nothing crazy, just a few words here and there. Who knows, maybe I'll write more if the mood strikes.
First up: Make Your Bed, William H. McRaven. I have a difficult time taking advice, I'll give advice every single minute of every single day, but you try to give me advice and that's where the rubber hits the road. Well that's what this book is, it's advice from a person that has lived a very successful life in the military. First as a Seal and then as something more than that. The beginning of the book is about making your bed and how it sets you up for success every single day. Here's the thing, I get up first every morning, my wife wakes up after me and she makes the bed. Am I therefore doomed to a life of inadequacy and missing all of my goals? Or maybe I just need to find another bed making like activity in the mornings to do? Maybe I could meditate? Stretch? Do something for myself that puts my day on the right track. I can get behind that, I can do that. There are other life lessons in there, the type of things that you see from time to time in the self help world. Shit, I can't remember much else about the book. I think there's an emphasis on persevering, learning from failure, having heart, taking risks, etc. These are definitely good lessons and I'm going to try to keep them in mind this year.
Second on the list: The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel: I gotta say I don't remember shit about this book. I listened to it because I just am not good with money. Try as I might, I spend more than I make. Some of that is that I don't make alot of it. I'm a small business owner in a tough market for what I do. The thing is I'm good at what I do, and I love what I do. So some things are bigger than money. Alot of my fear around money is a fear of where I've been and what situation I've put myself into when it comes to money. But I am really trying to live by the adage of the best time to plant a tree if you want to sit in the shade is 20 years ago, but the best time is actually today. It's just a way to remember that every second is a chance to turn things around, a chance to start on a different course. I need to keep that in mind, but I also need to start living with a sense of urgency and responsibility. Shit, I'm hard on myself, too hard on myself. This year, so far, has been tough. It's been tough health wise, it's been tough from a place of family dynamics. But every single moment has gives us a chance to turn it around.
What are my money wins this year? Well, I've contributed more to my IRA than I have any other year but one other. I've also been continuing to add to my investment account and I'm paying off debt more than I'm adding to it. Well, I was before tonight, but that's another story. I'm continuing to add clients and my business continues to be successful. It's not all doom and gloom in the old life category.
Okay, what's the book that I actually read? It's funny, I didn't even know what the title of the book was until earlier tonight when my wife asked me, the name of that book is: The Big Blowdown, George Pelecanos. A pulpy crime novel that, while being the first book in Pelecanos's D.C. Quartet, it's actually the third (of four) that I've read. It's trippy to read these things out of order. There are characters that are the parents of the characters in other books that I've read, including the book I finished just before just before the calendar turned to 2024: Tempt the Devil. The story is set primarily in the late 1940s and it follows Pete Karras from his days as a young boy in D.C., touching briefly on his time in the war (WWII), and the small time thugging that he did just after returning. Being on the wrong side of the law caused him to catch a beating that changed his life, but really didn't change who he was. There's a theme of not being able to outrun your destiny that runs through the book. Or maybe it's just that as people we put ourselves on certain trains, there are good trains and bad trains. But no matter if the train is good or bad, if you stay on the train you're on, you'll get to whatever destination that train is headed.
There are a ton of cigarette smoking, drinking, whoring, murdering, and philandering and you get the sense that the people doing it all look like they were extras from Dick Tracy. Pelecanos does a good job setting the mood and I'll be damned if a half dozen times while reading I didn't marvel at a paragraph or a sentence. I have the last book in the D.C. Quartet queued up and ready to go, it's King Suckerman, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to dive back into that world right now. I might need to read something else, another genre, or maybe something non-fiction before diving back in. If anyone has any recommendations please hit me in the comments and I'll look it up.
I'm not sure that this went anywhere, or that this is going anywhere, but I'll tell you what, I enjoy writing, I feel better when I'm writing. It's a form of mental exercise that I don't get with things like the Wordle, or the Waffle, or I especially don't get it from the mental claptrap that I read and write on social media sites.
For anyone that's reading, thanks for reading. I'll talk at you later.
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