Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

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The Compulsion To Read

The Compulsion To Read

The compulsion to read is not unlike a lot of other compulsions, I suppose.

I mean, was going to say that the reading urge is more of a simple please than all the other addictions and desires of the flesh – but I am not sure that is true.

My need to be alone and to be lost in my thoughts, back and forth between the pages of a book, is as real and as physical as the need for food and the need of relationship.

At least I think so. 🤷‍♂️

I feel as though I cannot breathe without it.

For I spent many afternoons in college and graduate school in similar poses, lost among the stacks.

My kind of downtime…

The most striking part of Elon’s character as a young boy was his compulsion to read. From a very young age, he seemed to have a book in his hands at all times. “It was not unusual for him to read ten hours a day,” said Kimbal. “If it was the weekend, he could go through two books in a day.” The family went on numerous shopping excursions in which they realized mid-trip that Elon had gone missing. Maye or Kimbal would pop into the nearest bookstore and find Elon somewhere near the back sitting on the floor and reading in one of his trancelike states.

-Ashley Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Amazon)

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Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Reading, #Writing

Missed Internet Mania

Missed Internet Mania

I should have jumped into the later internet mania – the early blogging mania – of 2004-2008.

Should have started blogging then instead of worrying about how to go back to grad school.

I know. Fate does what it wills… (And so does free will.)

But a few of those sure feel like wasted years.

Nearly every super successful blogger I know started near that time. 🤔

He jumped right into dot-com mania in 1995, when, fresh out of college, he founded a company called Zip2—a primitive Google Maps meets Yelp. That first venture ended up a big, quick hit. Compaq bought Zip2 in 1999 for $307 million. Musk made $ 22 million from the deal and poured almost all of it into his next venture, a start-up that would morph into PayPal. As the largest shareholder in PayPal, Musk became fantastically well-to-do when eBay acquired the company for $ 1.5 billion in 2002.

-Ashley Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Amazon)

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Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Blogging, #Writing

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