Saturday Inspiration

I decided to try out a new idea this past Saturday. I took some time to read from Ayn Rand's works out loud. I am doing a reading from The Fountainhead, one from Atlas Shrugged and one from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. The point is to try to connect Objectivism more with my actual daily life. If you don't read it, you forget. I believe I can at least benefit from this ritual until and unless I have actually memorized the books. After that, who knows? I've already found at least a few new insights. In The Fountainhead, I noticed that Howard Roark has no hobbies. Or so I thought. Actually, he has one main hobby. Drawing buildings is his hobby! (Cliff diving could be said to be his other hobby.) Of course it is often experienced as hard work, but he does it for the result. Basically, you should make your main hobby your career. This is another way of saying you should do the work you want to do, rather than just going through the motions at a job. Of course, Roark did have a job, doing manual labor in the building trades, as well as attending classes at the Institute. In his free time, mostly he drew buildings. To those of us who had cushy middle-class upbringings, that may seem a little crazy. But remember, this is basically what the author had to do. She made herself into a writing machine, because the novels she wanted did not exist and she was determined to bring them into existence. To take another example, in the early days of Microsoft Bill Gates didn't do much but Microsoft. Etc. Now I don't think the novel is saying you must be like that to be moral. It IS saying that Howard Roark is the ideal man and the rest of us owe so much to the few men like that. Isn't it worth it to find something you want to make or learn and really try and see what happens? Most people allow themselves to get distracted and never come close to reaching their full potential. And if you've already read the three books I listed, take some time to read them again. It's worth it. You won't find any other books like that.