Why earn the money? If you've been poor, you should know the answer to that: to live on whenever the income dries up. As it surely will do, sooner or later, unless you die early.
If you earn plenty of money, you may have the ultimate objective in sight: to retire and live for the rest of your life without being tied to a job. That's my idea of heaven, but I show no sign of attaining it.
Unlike some people (it seems), I have plenty of things to do away from work and I'd be delighted to quit the job for ever, starting now, if I could afford to.
Drinking has never taken much of my money or time. Though admittedly drinking at lunchtime occasionally befuddles me so that I don't get much done for the rest of the day. More to the point, for health reasons we're not really supposed to drink more than a large glass of wine per day, and my stopping point usually comes after several large glasses (it varies somewhat). So I worry about damaging my health, but not about the cost of it. A drinkable bottle of wine can be bought here for a few euros.
My Spanish mother-in-law likes wine, but her stopping point is one to two small glasses. I don't know how she does it...
Eric Frank Russell's "The Waitabits" is a classic that you should have read before now. Run, don't walk. They don't make 'em like that any more. He wrote some other classics too.
I've been thinking that all the sf I read is old, so not long ago ago I bought a Dozois collection of the best sf stories of two recent decades; and I'm gradually ploughing my way through it. So far, I'm inclined to wonder why I bothered. The stories are better written than sf used to be; but good writing, although it's nice to have, isn't the point of sf. Some of these stories are amiable enough, but the vital spark is absent. I'm amazed that Dozois, a veteran, managed to get excited by them. I suppose he must read an awful lot of worse stories, which may affect his judgment.
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Re: Money, wine, and sf
Date: 2006-02-21 04:52 pm (UTC)If you earn plenty of money, you may have the ultimate objective in sight: to retire and live for the rest of your life without being tied to a job. That's my idea of heaven, but I show no sign of attaining it.
Unlike some people (it seems), I have plenty of things to do away from work and I'd be delighted to quit the job for ever, starting now, if I could afford to.
Drinking has never taken much of my money or time. Though admittedly drinking at lunchtime occasionally befuddles me so that I don't get much done for the rest of the day. More to the point, for health reasons we're not really supposed to drink more than a large glass of wine per day, and my stopping point usually comes after several large glasses (it varies somewhat). So I worry about damaging my health, but not about the cost of it. A drinkable bottle of wine can be bought here for a few euros.
My Spanish mother-in-law likes wine, but her stopping point is one to two small glasses. I don't know how she does it...
Eric Frank Russell's "The Waitabits" is a classic that you should have read before now. Run, don't walk. They don't make 'em like that any more. He wrote some other classics too.
I've been thinking that all the sf I read is old, so not long ago ago I bought a Dozois collection of the best sf stories of two recent decades; and I'm gradually ploughing my way through it. So far, I'm inclined to wonder why I bothered. The stories are better written than sf used to be; but good writing, although it's nice to have, isn't the point of sf. Some of these stories are amiable enough, but the vital spark is absent. I'm amazed that Dozois, a veteran, managed to get excited by them. I suppose he must read an awful lot of worse stories, which may affect his judgment.
-- Jonathan