The uplifting shock of discovering and purging subconscious tropes — My little brother reads Tolstoy to relax. Although younger, my brother is no longer little. Blair is in his 60’s and six foot four, but old habits die hard. One old habit I’m forcing to change is the lazy way I visualize humans in novels. …

A sincere thank you for honoring (and reinforcing) your message with a small yet important detail. I clicked your book link. An overwhelming number of authors link Buy from Bezos. Yours doesn't. You chose Bookshop.org, which brought up my local independent bookstore. I got my copy of 'Survival of the Richest' at Golden Notebook in Woodstock NY last summer. This was a test. Mr Rushkoff—you passed! I wish every author was more mindful of who they support.

Shelf life sucks. — I once shopped at a ‘pick your own’ farm near Hana on Maui. We were given grocery baskets and a machete to tour a tropical food forest. The checkout counter was a large stump to hack apart fat sugarcanes to get to the juicy core. Biting into fresh sugarcane was…

This is the decision every creative person has to make to ward of pirates; do I fortify my ship with iron cladding and conscript lawyers to man the cannons, then wallow in defense mode? Ew. I chose to build a sleeker, quicker boat. I paint, I sketch, I write. I've…

You just made me realize I've insulted myself for creative escapism more than everyone else has. I should stop that. I've made my living as a painter for forty years. Patrons who come back for more say, "Your work makes me happy." My joke reply is, "Oh good. Now I don't have to get a therapist license and a practical job." What you wrote urges me stop being mean to me, or quite so dismissive of what I do. Thanks!

A worthy novel shows me what mastery really means. Listicles are my snacks now that I don’t look at facebook so often. Medium is a healthier scrolling alternative with escapist options to tear open the literary equivalent of a small bag of cheesy crunchies. This morning I was stalling going…

A tricky relationship with my life’s purpose. — Where did my fickle muse go? I stare at a half-finished painting going nowhere. Several others very much like it are stacked against the wall. This painting started out promising, but had drifted in yet another mundane direction — like I’m trying to find a freeway on ramp, but keep…

A 1983 copy of West With the Night is one of only a few books to survive almost 40 years of moving and purging many bookshelves. In my 20s Beryl inspired me to hurl myself into every adventure and danger be damned. In my 60s she gave me the confidence to write my stories as a memoir. and, like Hemmingway, I built my own pigpen.

I'm a painter and absolutely agree—an artist's essence is not only embedded, but emits that energy. I can 'dark night of the soul' in literature, but not on my walls. My favorite way to buy art is directly from artists I have made an effort to meet, talk with and…