I woke up at 5:30 this morning after seven hours of sleep. I was determined to get some writing done – real writing – but I failed. I got plenty of business work done, though, and a bit of blog writing. And I read (skim-read) two good books.
One was Mail and Get Rich by Ted Ciuba, a name I vaguely remember. (Given my memory, we may have been best friends. If so, apologies!) He published Mail and Get Rich in 2000 – 25 years ago. It has been sitting on one of my bookshelves in my home in Nicaragua since… could it have been since 2000?
I’ve glanced at it dozens of times over the years, noting the title’s nod to Napoleon Hill’s 1937 classic Think and Grow Rich, but this was the first time I pulled it out to read. I expected it to be a nostalgic stroll down marketing memory lane and was surprised at how much of it was still relevant. Ciuba even talks about internet marketing, which was in its infancy in the 2000s. So I’m thinking that I should… I don’t know what. Maybe send him a thumbs-up? But after all these years, I don’t even know if he’s still alive.
The other book was What We Talk About When We Talk About Raymond Carver, a series of interviews with Carver’s literary peers. I hadn’t realized it, but the literary world back then (the 1980s) had returned to the States and existed in the faculties of universities that had writing programs. The writers that were interviewed seemed to be as close and as passionate as the Lost Generation, and it made me sad. I couldn’t help thinking that, had I been more aware of what was going on, I might have been closer to it all. But I was just beginning my career as a businessman and a wealth builder and had abandoned, at least for the time being, my aspirations to become a serious writer.
Tonight, I have to begin reading our Mules book club selection for Thursday – a book by that South African writer J.M. Coetzee, which I suspect I won’t like. We’ll see.
K and I had sunset drinks and a small dinner at the Club House. TG, my friend since fourth grade, who’s been living here for 20 years, joined us. The conversation was good until the two of them started talking about sports – professional basketball or football or whatever is going on right now. I know nothing about sports and am proud of it. Not only that, I get huffy when I have to listen to it being discussed. The worst is that K is completely fluent in virtually every sport known to man. I don’t know why, but I find it irritating.
K mentioned that R’s bill for various recent medical procedures was over a million dollars, but he paid only $300 out of pocket. This is clear proof that health insurance is a scam – a rigged system benefitting both the insurance industry and Big Medical. Something that could not happen in a truly competitive free market.
Most people don’t get it because they can’t see the forest from the trees. They are happy to put some significant percentage of their earnings into health insurance and taxes that subsidize health costs because they fear what will happen to them if they are not “covered.”
We are looking forward to having the kids and grandkids here next week. I will try to get a good amount of work done before they get here, but, given the number of business meetings Gio has already scheduled for me, I’m not terribly optimistic about that.
