Don Kowalewski
Writer. Ad Sales and Marketing. Social Media Content Creator. Aeropress Coffee. Makes the best salsa in the world.
Things I Think:
I’ve often heard that a writer should read as much as he writes. I usually take this to mean a writer should we well versed in the works of Dickens, Chaucer, Twain, and various other standards. That would be classy, sure. And it would impress other writers. But, the extent of my reading these days comes in the form of reading Facebook status messages, Tweets, some of the articles linked in those Tweets, and random blogs. Hey …not my fault. If Charles Dickens and Mark Twain kept their blogs up to date, I’d read them.
I wonder what’s going to be the must-have, hot Christmas gift this year. And if I knew, would I buy a hundred of them and then start selling them for double their price on CraigsList? Yes …I would.
Every Monday I wake early to start my writing for the week, I press myself a cup of coffee, drink a large glass of water (a big glass of water drunken immediately upon waking is like WD40 for the human body …coffee without a big glass of water will get your brain going, but you’ll still feel sluggish …trust me), and I read the latest from Scott Westerman and then Aaron Karo (in that order). Their two colums couldn’t be more different. It’s like listening to NPR and reading a Bible passage and then chasing it with Weird Al’s Greatest Hits and an old issue of Mad Magazine. Along with the coffee, the massive high-brow to low-brow diametric shift I put my brain through readies me for writing – just as soon as I ‘Like’ a few more of my friends status updates and Foursquare check-ins.
I hope I used “diametric shift” correctly in that last paragraph. I wish there was a place I could look up useless facts like that.
Oh, and by the way, Scott Westerman wrote about the Penn State tragedy and the ethics involved in every aspect of the meltdown …Aaron Karo wrote about sports on a big screen v. at-the-stadium and about the black electrical tape he used to repair his couch. See?
And finally, because if I bore you for one more moment with nonsense I know you won’t get to this next part, as a non-hunter, non-outdoorsman, I still get a thrill from seeing animals up close – especially deer. My in-laws bought a house in the woods and when we have breakfast we’re often treated to wild animals (foxes, deer, geese, raccoons, squirrels, birds of all kinds, and more) doing what they do less than 50 yards from the window in the breakfast nook. It makes going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house pretty awesome for my kids …ok, and for me. Look …DEER!
It’s the simple things. Nice blog entry, Don. And I wonder why I only get 6 readers each week and 5 of those clicks are mine from different computers. Sigh. One of these days.
Don Kowalewski 