The Ink-Pot and the Palette

I don't think I knew that you are a former bookstore owner. My father, also a great lover of books, went something like that route, dealing in old and rare books by mail order. He had a good eye. I'm afraid I didn't inherit it.

Not surprisingly here in Journal World, you're one of several people to have mentioned that fic has taken up a lot of reading that used to go to "real" books. I have no quarrel with that at all--I view it as part of the fascinating and massive cultural and economic shift happening as a result of highly distributed information, and heaven knows fanfic was a mainstay of my reading life until I apparently lost the ability to read at all.

I like your practical approach to the attention problem: go to the cinema, lock the door, switch to herb tea. Sane steps to take, and man, what a powerful statement this is: "doing only one thing at a time as an anti-stress measure."

I need to take that to heart. I think there's a huge clue for me there. Thank you for it.