On this day in 1861, Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the the United States Army to accept command of the Army of Northern Virginia.
In the end, that didn’t turn out so well.
No, we’re not debating the war here.
No, we’re not debating the statues on Monument Avenue.
Two words people.
Tourism. Dollars.
It’s history. History can be ugly. You remember history so that you don’t get ugly again.
Go read some real history. All of it. It’s never as simple as you think.
It’s Wednesday and whilst I’ll be in Lexington, Virginia for a meeting, I won’t visit the Lee Chapel. Not that I wouldn’t, I just won’t have the time.
Again, read your history. Read Lee’s biography.
I digress.
BRB…talk amongst yourselves whilst I put away the soapbox.
I’m still transitioning from an actor/producer learning a script to a writer trying to write a script, a novel, a blog post. The past year and a half I switched my focus. I’m readjusting that again.
I admit that going home from work Monday with the concept of having nothing to do was great until I remembered all of the things I had to do.
Sometimes I wish I could do a system restore to a previous point in time when I didn’t have so many commitments. You know, just like I have to do on Windows 10 about every other week when the Start button crashes again.
Seriously Microsoft, there’s no fix yet?
One of the things I’m doing is cleaning up old files, both paper and digital. That’s part of this summer’s quest to minimalize the crap. I look around my office (I am, as of yet, still afraid to really look around the garage or attic) and realize how much stuff I have that I really just don’t need. Sure, some of it is sentimental and I have numerous keepsakes from shows I’ve been in or produced (or both). But, stacks and stacks of paperwork? Souvenirs that really don’t mean anything. Books I’ve read and don’t want to keep and even books I have that I never intend to read.
My apologies to my friends who are bibliophiles, but if I can get a book from the library, or find the section I need online, there are very few cases where I need to keep an actual hard copy.
C.S. Lewis and Tolkien being amongst the obvious exceptions to that rule.
And then there are stacks of writings that need to be digitized. Notebooks and classwork from classes long gone by.
Admittedly, like the man who never throws out a scrap piece of wood because he might need it, as a writer, I keep thinking “I might need that file.” And I might, but is there a better way to store it?
On a side note, I also have a stack of scrap wood left over from the New Year’s Eve production that’s still in the back seat of my truck…because there is no room in the garage.
There will be. Some day. Just not today. And maybe not tomorrow.
In other news, actor Ryan O’Neal was born in this day in 1941. Your loving my blog means me never having to say I’m sorry.
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