Enjoyed this from Austin Kleon:
I didn’t start a blog because I had something to say, I started a blog to find something to say.
And:
Most writers don’t write to express what they think. They write to figure out what they think. Writing is a process of discovery.
I started this version of my blog on November 24, 2001. Ironically, it’s a link to a San Francisco Chronicle story about why writers enjoy living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
So why is it authors multiply here like cheap noodle restaurants?One reason the Bay Area is such a good place for writers may be the same reason it’s such a good place for arbitration lawyers and podiatrists – it’s a terrific place to live.
So much has changed in the almost twenty years since that article was written. Local bookstores, great restaurants, group events, …
After the last few weeks of fires, heat, etc., recent articles seem to talk much more about the problems – asking “why bother living in San Francisco (or California)?”
For example, this Washington Post article titled “Warmer. Burning. Epidemic-challenged. Expensive. The California Dream has become the California Compromise.“
The cityscape resembles the surface of a distant planet, populated by a masked alien culture. The air, choked with blown ash, is difficult to breathe.
There is the Golden Gate Bridge, looming in the distance through a drift-smoke haze, and the Salesforce Tower, which against the blood-orange sky appears as a colossal spaceship in a doomsday film.
San Francisco, and much of California, has never been like this.
California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place they have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived.
Indeed. Life is so rich…it’s all about finding something to say.