Convenience isn’t always better

In a time of digital everything, I can’t help but feel that sometimes convenience and practicality aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. Sure I can have three weeks of music available on an iPod, but the satisfaction and joy of browsing around for hours in a record store has been lost to most people. You see, I love bargain bins because it lets me discover bands that maybe even stopped existing. I also don’t mind paying full price for a good album from a band I love. Actually, I went to the Berkley Amoeba store recently and had a blast just looking around for hours at CD cases of some artists I knew and many who were new to me. The process was rudimentary yet satisfying. Get 30 CDs, listen to samples. Set aside CDs you want. Repeat. People nowadays browse online, download illegally and can get an entire collection in a matter of days, if that.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily wrong, I’m saying that the search was part of the fun... or more so a BIG part of the fun, at least for me. I can say the same about books, browsing through bookstores isn’t practical... it’s time consuming and a pain to discover when the store has what you’re looking for in another section. The thing is that when you find a special random book you were looking for or some random surprise you pick up, it’s wonderful. Years back, my wife read the description of a book and said I might like it. I bought it without thinking twice and I was introduced to the brilliant Carl Hiaasen.

Our searches now are digital and so are most connections. Technology has allowed me to publish a book and for that I am eternally grateful. And not only that, it’s allowed me to publish a book by my own rules... now there is one detail about my book a lot of people still don’t know. I wrote the first draft entirely by hand: four notebooks of chicken scratchings that in them held the first part of my little story, whose first installment is over 600 pages long. Although the way I’m offering my book is quite convenient, the way it came about wasn’t. Hundreds of pages of research and notes, annotations and the grind that was transcribing said book... and I loved every second of it in large part because it was so impractical and people asked me why I did it that way. The answer is because I love book stores, and love record stores and love writing long emails rather than wall posts to say happy birthday and love going out of my way to have coffee or tea with a friend and because practical things may save time, but they sacrifice experience quite often.

Is a handwritten letter something practical nowadays? Of course it isn’t. The thing is that it shows you care and that you gladly invested time into something that wasn’t practical in the spirit of experience, of adventure, of life.

So here’s to at least occasionally being COMPLETELY impractical for the sake of living.

Peace, love and maki rolls.

JD