eating cucumbers without permission...

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."

"Don't break the chain." He said again for emphasis.

I think that the biggest mistake people make is latching onto the first idea that comes to them and trying to do that. It really comes to a thing that my folks taught me about money. Don't buy something unless you've wanted it three times. Similarly, don't throw in a feature when you first think of it. Think if there's a way to generalize it, think if it should be generalized. Sometimes you can generalize things too much. I think like the things in Scheme were generalized too much. There is a level of abstraction beyond which people don't want to go. Take a good look at what you want to do, and try to come up with the long-term lazy way, not the short-term lazy way.

No one talks about how much fun it is to be a fundamentalist. The word has changed, of course: for any rational person, 'fundamentalist' now means 'manifestation of raw evil', but being a charismatic Christian was a hoot. It was like being at a wild party with no drink, no sex, no hangover, no regrets. I believe! I believe! I am in a suburban sitting-room, and I believe! It was a constant state of expectation and yearning; a suspension so high and long, it was almost like release. Speaking in tongues -- I could do it now, if I dared -- was pure flow; you had to wince at the sweetness of it. Miracles were two a penny. Everything made sense. People prayed for their lost glasses and found their dentures instead and we all laughed at God's little joke. You can’t live up there for ever, of course, and the downs, like a junkie’s, were terrible and complicated...

There are many such conditions. I threw up a little in my mouth when I first saw the band name "5ive", for example, and again this weekend at a clothes shop called "Temt". Text messages provoke uncontrollable weeping.

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, -- for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

Everyone should read this. (And the followup, which brings joy back in to the picture.)

"this is a community for showing off your bedroom"