Wallitner Weekly 19

Hello everyone!

A few of productive things happened this past week.

I haven’t gotten sunburnt yet! I have been doing very well keeping sunscreen on and not staying out too long in the sun. My fiancee and I went to a superhero trivia night and didn’t come in last. I also found some really great tutorials on how to code a certain style of video game.

I’m almost back from vacation!

I will be returning to Washington on Monday afternoon. The most exciting part about this is since Florida is three hours ahead, my sleep schedule will resemble a normal person’s for at least a few days. I have been going to bed at like 3 am here and waking up at noon, but back home that’s midnight and 9 am.

I learned how to make cut scenes for video games and I think I have come up with a cool way to make music theory videos using this video game software. We shall see if I can make it work the way I want.

Sometimes We Read Sometimes We Listen.

I don’t read very often. I much prefer to listen to audio books (At 1.5 times speed). I never considered myself a reader growing up, and I don’t really consider myself one now. Especially compared to my fiancee, who is currently reading like 4 different books. I prefer audio books because I can just listen and continue to work or play video games. The story goes on in the background and I pick up the important bits and it works just fine for me.

But I have recently gotten into writing and everyone says, if you want to write, you must read. I didn’t realize how important reading was until I picked up the Silmarillion. For those of you who don’t know, The author of Lord of the Rings wrote a book called the Silmarillion. This book serves as a precursor to the events of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I decided to read it because it falls in line with some of the things that I would like to write in my book series.

What I find most interesting about the Silmarillion is that it was published 4 years after the author died. It was compiled by the author’s son. The book contains several shorter stories that make up the entirety of the world that LotR takes place in. It lays the groundwork for all that comes to pass in the famous story.

There is a preface in the Silmarillion which contains a letter from J.R.R Tolkien to Milton Waldman. Waldman was a friend of the author and in the letter Tolkien describes the entirety of the Universe of the Lord of the Rings. He starts with the events of the Silmarillion and continues on through the Hobbit and the the famous LotR. The letter is maybe ten pages in this relatively small book I am reading, but in those pages he speaks an entire world into existence. It is incredibly interesting.

That letter reminds me of how I listen to audiobooks. It’s only the important bits. And it was almost shocking to go from reading this concise letter, to then reading the same story shrouded in fiction and details and obscurity. Thats a problem that I have with books compared to movies. In a book you don’t read that a dude was wearing a red shirt. You read that a man who stood no taller than five foot four inches was wearing a Burgundy T-Shirt that had a BBQ stain right above his left breast. Thankfully the shirt and the stain were similar enough in color after a few times through the washer, otherwise he would have been embarrassed as he embarked on his blind date.

Of course, I see the value in the details, but sometimes the details can be so distracting that you forget that the story is about the dude, and not the shirt.

This might be a stretch, but people are like books.

Sometimes we just want to listen and skim over the bits we don’t think are important. And sometimes we need to read and get every last detail. Know how its spelled. Let our hands trace their letters. Smell the pages. Get to know them.

I’m not afraid to admit I’ve had “conversations” with people that I wish I could fast forward through. But I have also met people that I want to sit down and spend hours and hours “reading”. I want to learn from them and experience their story. You can really get to know a person that way. Good people are like good books. And if you find a book that’s worn out and used, maybe its got a page or two missing, its spine is bent, the pages have changed color with age, maybe its got that old book smell. Those are the best books. Their stories have stood the test of time and have been listened to by many. I recommend sitting and reading those books as often as you can. Don’t let them sit on the shelf and collect dust.