You ask me, in brief, what satisfaction I get out of life, and why I go on working. I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. There is in every living creature an obscure but powerful impulse to active functioning. Life demands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful and dangerous to the healthy organism—in fact, it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really idle.

The precise form of an individual’s activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity. I do not lay eggs, as a hen does, because I was born without any equipment for it. For the same reason I do not get myself elected to Congress, or play the violoncello, or teach metaphysics in a college, or work in a steel mill. What I do is simply what lies easiest to my hand. It happens that I was born with an intense and insatiable interest in ideas, and thus like to play with them. It happens also that I was born with rather more than the average facility for putting them into words. In consequence, I am a writer and editor, which is to say, a dealer in them and concoctor of them.

There is very little conscious volition in all this. What I do was ordained by the inscrutable fates, not chosen by me. In my boyhood, yielding to a powerful but still subordinate interest in exact facts, I wanted to be a chemist, and at the same time my poor father tried to make me a business man. At other times, like any other realtively poor man, I have longed to make a lot of money by some easy swindle. But I became a writer all the same, and shall remain one until the end of the chapter, just as a cow goes on giving milk all her life, even though what appears to be her self-interest urges her to give gin.

I am far luckier than most men, for I have been able since boyhood to make a good living doing precisely what I have wanted to do—what I would have done for nothing, and very gladly, if there had been no reward for it. Not many men, I believe, are so fortunate. Millions of them have to make their livings at tasks which really do not interest them. As for me, I have had an extraordinarily pleasant life, despite the fact that I have had the usual share of woes. For in the midst of these woes I still enjoyed the immense satisfaction which goes with free activity. I have done, in the main, exactly what I wanted to do. Its possible effects on other people have interested me very little. I have not written and published to please other people, but to satisfy myself, just as a cow gives milk, not to profit the dairyman, but to satisfy herself. I like to think that most of my ideas have been sound ones, but I really don’t care. The world may take them or leave them. I have had my fun hatching them.

Full Letter

When he explains it to me, the joy of hearing music that he only heard as a child or seeing a film that he only read about when he was younger, his eyes light up with an animated joy, but in the same vein, I know it’s a joy that I won’t likely ever feel. Part of it is definitely lacking that passion for the form: I enjoy film and music, but not in a fanatical sense. But equally because in my memory, I’m not sure that there’s much in the film or music world that holds up to the test of time at least not to this degree.

Granted, it’s entirely possible that maybe I won’t see a movie like the Green Mile or Forrest Gump (to pick two out of the ether) for years or maybe even decades to come, but the distribution is so much different, with DVDs and downloads and reruns on television, all things that often didn’t exist when my friend was younger. The same goes for music, where back in the day, you had to be content with hearing a particular tune on the radio or perhaps buying a record and now I can stream most music from online sources, or purchase the digital file.

In a way, I’m jealous of my friend, when he tells me with enthusiasm that he’s going to stay up late and watch Turner Classic Movies at 3am when a film that he hasn’t seen in 37 years is playing. I feel that he enjoys the experience more because of the rarity of it. That, because of the time passed and the limitations (he doesn’t own a computer and has no pretenses to start), he gets to appreciate the film more, in ways I could never imagine. The same goes for ordering CDs from catalogues or over the phone to hear a single track once again after decades and to have that experience live up to or even surpass the expectations of memory and nostalgia.

To have the appreciation, that dedication, that love of art…it’s truly remarkable.

The reasoning is that the Sun is about 400 times the size of the Moon, but the distance from the Earth to the Sun is about 400 times farther than the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

So what results is a Moon that just barely covers the entire Sun in the Earth’s sky, causing a solar eclipse.

And because of those special set of circumstances that need to occur in order for an eclipse to happen, we’ve yet to discover another planet that might experience this phenomenon. Which, when you think about it, is pretty cool.

For good and bad, I’ve often avoided many of these situations, because the absolute is a scary spot. It’s live or die, it’s black or white. The fear makes it too easy to not accept the risk.

But more and more, the world around me seems to be encouraging taking a stand, making a step, marking a line and going for it. The things that you can’t go back on.

Some of it is unfortunate, facing the music as a result of my own stupidity, like a speeding ticket that used up $300 dollars I certainly would have loved to use elsewhere.

Some of it is going to be positive, like going ahead with the plan to make the Cartoon Curling Challenge happen this season.

Some of it is making me nervous, like decisions on the future, those calls that could change the whole course of a life.

It’s a paradigm shift and it’s easy to choose to stay safe, ensconce yourself in a productive and satisfactory lifestyle, never putting yourself out there, never testing your own  limits and challenging yourself further.

But that’s not much fun. Fortes fortuna adiuvat.

Like so many modern people, my relationship with technology makes no sense whatsoever: It’s the most important aspect of my life that I hate. The more central it becomes to how I live, the worse it seems for the world at large. I believe all technology has a positive short-term effect and a negative long-term impact  and – on balance – the exponential upsurge of technology’s social import has been detrimental to the human experience. Obviously and paradoxically, I’m writing these sentiments on a laptop computer.

Eating The Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman

1. Nothing is completely authentic. Even the guys who kill themselves are partially acting.
2. Music that skews inauthentic is almost always more popular in the present tense. Music that skews toward authenticity has more potential to be popular over time, but also has a greater likelihood of being unheard completely.
3. In general, the best balance seems to come from artists who are (kind of) fake as people, but who make music that’s (mostly) real. This would be people like Bob Dylan. The worst music comes from the opposite situation, such as songs by TV on the Radio that aren’t about wolves. If the singer is fake and the music is fake (Scott Weiland, Madonna, Bing Crosby), everything works out okay.
4. Normal people don’t see any of this as a particularly pressing problem. They do not care. A few critics do, but that’s about it.
5. The most telling moment for any celebrity is when he or she attempts to be inauthentic on purpose, and particularly when that attempt fails.

Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman

1. If you change any detail about the past, you might accidentally destroy everything in present-day existence.
2. If you went back in time to accomplish a specific goal (and you succeeded at this goal), there would be no reason for you to have travelled back in time in the first place.
3. A loop in time eliminates the origin of things that already exist.
4. You’d possibly kill everybody by sneezing.
5. You already exist in the recent past.
6. Before you attempted to travel back in time, you’d already know if it worked.
7. Unless all of time is happening simultaneously within multiple realities, memories and artifacts would mysteriously change.
8. The past has happened, and it can only happen the way it happened.

Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman

Anyway, the post was commented on by a Community Manager from MapMyRun and then we traded a handful of amusing emails back and forth.

So over the past few weeks, I’ve only been periodically running. I play dodgeball on Mondays, curling on Wednesdays and thus haven’t had as many opportunities to go out running as I’d like to. Therefore, I’ve gotten another email, only this one has changed dramatically:

Hi friend,
You haven’t been back in ten days and your workout log is dying to get updated!

Your last workout was logged on 2011-10-21. Don’t lose miles, calories or reps. You can log your past workouts and keep your training on track. You can also sync up directly with devices like Garmin, Polar, Nike+, and more…

Log Your Workouts

Do you find logging workouts hard?
If you’re like a lot of us, it can be really hard … That’s why we make it really easy! With the simple my home quick-add log and our start-stop mobile tracking technology it can be quick and fun!

Have you checked out our Challenges to be eligible for prizes for all your hard work?

Did you need some help logging your workouts? Check out some of our tutorials.

While You Were Away…
This may sound like a guilt trip but the MapMyRUN Community has been busy since your last workout:
- Total Miles: 2, 943, 104
- Total Workouts Logged 256, 878
- Total Calories Burned: 97, 273, 671
- Total Routes: 334, 797

It’s not too late to get back on track!

Stay fit,
The MapMyRUN Team

Now I’m not going to say that I was the catalyst of change, but the refinement of the message (hell just merely saying “This may sound like a guilt trip…”) is pretty much exactly what I was joking about before.

MapMyRun definitely gets it.

Hardly eloquent stuff, but I’m sure the fanboys will try to decipher much from it (good joke I heard already: “Oh Wow was the name of his childhood sled”), which I guess is the point of last words. Usually, they aren’t great bits of insight into the character of the deceased or particularly meaningful.

I always assume that my own last words will be something along the lines of “I’m done with this pudding” and I really hope that at the time, someone misinterprets that to be extremely deep.

But I spent the morning looking over WikiQuote’s Last Words page and it’s an interesting mix. For every quote that is sweeping and grand, there’s just as many that are simply asking for water or saying goodbye to someone. The distinction between the two doesn’t follow any lines of greatness or wealth. With death being the great equalizer, leaders and heroes are just as likely to say something ordinary as criminals are to say something profound. It’s a thought that’s actually captured in someone’s last words:

• You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the Grim Reaper.
  • Who: Robert Alton Harris, d. April 21, 1992

In any case, here’s some of my favourites:

• I did not get my Spaghetti-O’s, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.
  • Who: Thomas J. Grasso, d. March 20, 1995
  • Note: Executed by injection, Oklahoma.

• Maybe they only had one rocket
  • Who: Lawrence Beeter, WWII British soldier who was taking cover in a bunker after they were hit by a rocket. A second volley destroyed the bunker and Beeter was killed.

• Nobody shot me.
  • Who: Frank “Tight Lips” Gusenberg, American mobster murdered as part of the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre.
    • Note: In response to a police officer who asked “Who shot you?”

• Why should I talk to you? I’ve just been talking with your boss.
  • Wilson Mizner after talking to a priest.

• This isn’t Hamlet, you know. It’s not meant to go into the bloody ear.
  • Who: Actor Laurence Olivier supposedly said this when a nurse, attempting to moisten his lips, mis-aimed.
  • Note: In Shakespeare‘s play Hamlet, the title character’s father is killed when poison is dripped into his ear while asleep.

• Why, yes, a bulletproof vest.
  • Who: Domonic Willard
  • Notes: Willard was a small time mobster during the Prohibition. Just before his death by firing squad, he was asked if he had any last requests.

These two are notable simply because Farley tried to emulate Belushi so much.

• Just don’t leave me alone.
  • Who: John Belushi

• Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.
  • Who: Chris Farley
  • Said to a prostitute as she left his hotel room following a weekend-long drug and sex binge. When she turned around, Chris Farley had collapsed.

• Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!
  • Who: Karl Marx, asked by his housekeeper what his last words were

Ignoring the obvious technology shortcomings that plagued the show (a key video that apparently would have served as a powerful focal point in the middle of the presentation failed to load, leading to a 20 minute break before the decision was made to forge ahead without it. As I’ve learned from our own events at work, always have guaranteed means to deliver the video (ie not streaming off the Internet)), I came away disappointed with Jean’s presentation.

She started by talking a bit about herself, which is a strong story for sure. A refugee from Haiti, she rose the ranks as a journalist in Quebec before being named to the post of Governor General.

But she made a misstep by offering a glossed over look at Nova Scotia’s own history, while trying to herald the province as the starting point for social change and political action throughout history in Canada. One folly was saying how the local indigenous people welcomed European explorers and than settlers with open arms, a statement that seems to ignore the infamous Edward Cornwallis’ scalp bounty during the so-called Father Le Loutre’s War. This is hardly an event that has been lost in the history books. In fact, it still lives on in present day with a junior high school in Halifax formerly named after Cornwallis opting to have their name changed over the summer.

Another historical oversight was talking about how Nova Scotia welcomed Loyalists to their province during the American Revolution and she made a strong effort to mention that this included Black Loyalists. Coming from the South Shore of the province, and growing up not far from where the Black Loyalists settled, it’s troublesome to watch that particular bit of history be misrepresented and I felt that the struggles that Black Loyalists faced (though not slaves, they were hardly welcomed into the homes of Nova Scotians) when coming here.

All in all, the speech didn’t resonate and it never really grabbed a tight hold onto what the actual topic was aiming to be about. I was expecting something meatier than just “get out and vote” and “write your local political representatives about your views.”

As can be expected, with the topic of social change and the state of the world today, she was asked about the Occupy movement which has captured the attention of many around the world. Her answer was measured in a way that could even be considered condescending. She called the movement “healthy” and said that utilizing the right to protest is “productive”. She formerly represented the Queen in our government, and while a safe and self-censored answer to that question could be expected, I had again hoped for something with more substance.

Unfortunately, that’s how the whole evening felt. I would have been interested to hear the story and the passion of Michaelle Jean, the former refugee who worked hard to become a noted journalist, not just in Quebec but in Canada as a whole. Instead, it was a very safe talk by Michaelle Jean, former Governor-General, taking considerable care to not say anything to controversial.

A shame.