Changing My Life

As readers have noticed, I have not been that motivated to write about politics lately. I did create the Jim Cramer bashing world we now live in (check the timeline), but that was more market experience-driven than politically motivated.

The weighty item on my mind lately has been why multi-record sets sometimes have Side 1 backed with, say Side 6. I just bought Leon Russell's Leon Live, a 3 record set that I snagged for two bucks and it has Side 1, Side 6, then Side 2, Side 5, ending with Side 3, Side 4. It is one of the obvious things that has not registered for my entire life. It was a continual mystery, but now I got it. Remember when you could stack your albums on a spindle that would drop the next record when the current one played out? Well, with the kind of numeration of Leon Live, you could hear sides 1, 2 and 3 and the flip the whole pile upside down to continue with 4,5 and 6. Therefore, 100 minutes of continual Russell-izing!

So those are the kinds of thoughts I have been obsessed with, and then something popped into my mind. Before we moved to Cooperstown, I was very resentful of the lives I supported. Sure, it was great to be able to allow my family to do whatever they fancied with their time, but what about me? I never had time to do the things I wanted to. So, isn't that everyone's lot in life? Probably, but I wasn't ready to accept it. Knowing that legendary White Sox and Browns owner Bill Veeck got very little sleep, I researched how to train one's self to not sleep. Pretty pathetic, I must say, but I was dead serious about it. If the somnambulist from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari could make use of his nocturnal time, why couldn't I?

End result is we moved, I stopped working full time and now am on the cusp of a second book and working on other writing projects as well. My time is my own, money is put in proper perspective and all is well with the world.

And, if I want to spend 100 minutes listening to Leon Russell, I can. There's no one and no thing stopping me.