I've come to realize something tonight. Recently I ran into some money. That was a strangely worded sentence, but I got a little extra in the wallet and I'm thinking to myself, "I'm bored, I got money, maybe I should buy one of those computer video games." I don't particularly like video games. I usually get bored when I realize I can turn them off and no one's life is really all that effected. On occasion though I find someone has gone ahead and made a video game about something I think is cool, like Star Wars, Spiderman, or Wes Anderson movies. On these rare occasions I can seem to ignore my distaste for sitting in front of a computer not looking at naked people, but only for a while.
I've developed a trick for talking myself out of purchasing such time wasting paraphernalia, which is I ask myself if I were talking to someone at the grocery store (I don't go to bars) and I wanted to let them know what I was up to, would I be ashamed to admit I had spent the past week developing my connection with the force or some such nonsense? Usually the answer is yes and I decide to spend my cash at Starbucks instead.
This of course leads me to my devastating insight. I was considering getting a video game for my cool Macintosh computer and I asked myself if I had any reason to think people would be interested in listening to me explain how my video game worked. The answer was a resounding no, as expected. Unfortunately I then immediately considered what else I would be doing with my time and settled on reading... I like to read... want to make something of it? It was at this point I made the mistake of asking myself if anyone would be interested in me explaining what I'd read the week before. To be fair it would be pretty awesome to stumble upon someone in the grocery store who thought my insights into Henry Miller's prose was interesting, but odds are this probably won't happen. So I'm left with the undeniable truth that whether I spend my week shooting lasers at space men or reading about a morally bankrupt American surviving in pre World War II Paris, I'm going to have nothing to say to whoever happens to be standing behind me in line while I buy my yogurt.
I don't suppose I should let this deter me from reading for the next week, but it just bothers me that I'd likely have a more fulfilling interaction if I spent the next seven days watching baseball games and memorizing batting averages. People sure like to discuss baseball... not so much Albert Camus... pretty much just baseball around these parts.
