How Hard Can It Be?

I know my tone was a little down last night.

One of the things I'm experimenting with here is being really honest about the downs and ups of trying to get all the aspects of "The Truth About Everything" off the ground, which is no more difficult than getting a fully-loaded 747 off the ground after the wings have been taken off and the pilot is Dom DeLuise.

My intense study of all media - okay, my channel surfing - has taught me that everything in every medium is character and story, and that the lifeblood of every story is conflict.

Since I have no shortage of conflict in my life, I thought I'd share some of that with you in all mediums, especially if it can be helpful to you in some way.

Intensely private people (Dick Cheney comes to mind) don't realize that no one else really cares about your problems since everyone has so many of their own. So it doesn't really matter what others know about you, and if it can help them deal with their own problems, great.

Earlier this evening I was also feeling a little overwhelmed, but since then I had a great conversation with my primary collaborator, Eric Barendsen, got great e-mails (as always) from my sister Carol (including an e-mail from one of her extremely intelligent employees), had a substantive conversation with my wife Patti, confirmed both podcast interviews for July 19, and requested the ability to podcast two fascinating panels on July 2 and July 10.

So things went from down to up.

Most importantly, I reread the last chapter of my book and then broke through the most difficult writer's block of the entire 1000 pages (Yes! I'm editing it down to 300!) to FINALLY FINISH THE BOOK! (Tickertape parade goes here, or at least when I shake my head there's some dandruff.)

I spent the thousand pages to get to a very strong message in the last few pages, and those were the most difficult pages to write. So I tore the last few pages out of World Book and so they're inexplicably about Picasso to Pizarro.

Also during this time I made plans to go on a 14-mile hike with Sarah up to the cliffs at the base of Long's Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park for her to take more awesome pictures, and any plans I make with Sarah make me extremely happy.

All I have to do now is edit 1000 of the most complex pages ever written into 300 of the most accessible pages, and all our species has to do is completely reverse the habits of about 6.6 billion of us.

How hard can that be?