Bowie and Buckley

This interview with William F. Buckley, which I saw in the movie Best of Enemies, about his adversarial relationship with Gore Vidal, really made an impression on me. That it is possible to reach a point in life where you're so tired, so out of ideas, that you wouldn't go back and do it again. 

Here's the beginning of the interview.

Rose: Do you wish you were 20?

Buckley: No. Absolutely not. No. If I had a pill that would reduce my age by 25 years I wouldn't take it. 

Rose: Why not?

Buckley: Because I'm tired of life.

It's such a contrast to David Bowie's last statement about his life. He says better hurry up to express what you have to say because you'll find time runs out before you're finished. 

I go back and forth on this. There are still a lot of things I'd like to do that I'm pretty sure I won't get to do. I am disappointed in the way some things have turned out. I also am at times somewhat tired of life but I have many more moments when I'm not. 

I think as you get older you have a bit of Bowie and a bit of Buckley. You go back and forth. I think eventually, if you live long enough you do get tired of life, the repetition, the roles we're expected to play, whether they fit or not. The endless arguments that never get resolved. The pointless will of human beings. 

PS: If someone offered me a pill that would make me 20, I'd take it!

(Many thanks to Dave Winer for finding the words.)

The first fifteen minutes

Learning something new is frustrating. It involves being dumb on the way to being smart.

Once we get good enough (at our tools, at our work) it's easier and easier to skip learning how to do the next thing, because, hey, those fifteen minutes are a hassle.

Learning to use the new fax machine, or a different interface on the voice mail or even, yikes, a new version of Excel. (I confess that I dropped off the Office train in 2010.)

And so we get in the habit of giving a half effort, not really reading the instructions, shrugging our shoulders and moving on. The professional in us that was always eager to find tools that added leverage becomes the complacent coaster, defending what's on the table as 'good enough'. 

The problem with evaluating the first fifteen minutes of frustration is that we easily forget about the 5,000 minutes of leverage that frustration earns us if we stick it out.

Yes, Isaac Asimov typed all 400 of his books on a manual typewriter. But I'm glad Cory Doctorow has a laptop.