Inspirational Quotes from Great Literature.

You know that James Wright-y feeling you get when you look back on the last year or so of your life and see it amounts to nothing more than staring at a screen writing words nobody will ever read, both professionally and for pleasure? Well, a heavy wave of that burnt-retina despair washed over me last night, children.

So I did the only thing a person can do under the circumstances. I poured a glass of whiskey and I got out The Long Winter for inspiration. Because as pointless as contract-writing life seems, it's like a day at a beauty spa compared to the Blizzards of '80 - '81. As usual, the reading worked like a charm (the whiskey worked like an alcohol.)

Here are the most inspirational quotes I came across.

1. How brave Laura is here. "Just" buying something, she says. As if buying something were easy! As if it were something people did every day of the week! How can a person not be inspired in the face of such heroic stoicism?

2. You may have thought that only 20th and 21st century people knew how to "peace out," but Pa Ingalls was doing it long before it was cool. (And long before the spelling change.)

3. See what I mean? I may think it's boring to stare at a computer all day--BUT AT LEAST I DON'T HAVE ICICLES IN MY MUSTACHE!

Mama Got the Stink-Eye.

You may imagine that the life of a blogger whose target audience exists only in the future is all glamor and launch parties. In fact, children, it's somewhat less exotic. And the act of blogging itself is not all caviar brunches and eating pudding from golden spoons*. In fact, because it requires staring at a computer screen for hours on end, sometimes even the most lauded bloggers get what's called the Stink-Eye.

It got me real bad, children. Real bad.


Luckily, I have a wealth of homeopathic remedies at my disposal. I will begin with a warm salt-water rinse and if that doesn't work, I'll sip ginger infusions and rest with cucumbers over my eyes until the stink eye is banished.

*I don't think I have an accurate idea of what the rich and famous actually do.