Heavy Stuff 1

I used to think about being a novelist, but there is that whole notebook thing. You know, carry a notebook with you wherever you go, write down what you see, what you hear, what you feel; if you wake up from a dream, write it down. While that's good advice for a writer, that's not how I want to live.
Often when we examine things, we change them. To study a flower, we cut it from the plant and take it to a lab and analyze a dead flower, or we take a photograph and look at an image rather than the real thing. Relationships are complicated, emotions are complicated, life is complicated. Instead of living in the moment, the dedicated writer has to step back and analyze and try to uncomplicate and explain.
Socrates said an unexamined life is not worth living. In some sense, an examined life is not lived at all.