Popularity Has Become Its Own Justification.

Twitter Is Unspeakably Irritating. Twitter Stands For Everything I Oppose.

And When The Event, The Big Change In Your Life, Is Simply An Insight-- Isn't That A Strange Thing? That Absolutely Nothing Changes Except That You See Things Differently And You're Less Fearful And Less Anxious And Generally Stronger As A Result: Isn't It Amazing That A Completely Invisible Thing In Your Head Can Feel Realer Than Anything You've Experienced Before?

The More You Pursue Distractions, The Less Effective Any Particular Distraction Is, And So I'd Had To Up Various Dosages, Until, Before I Knew It, I Was Checking My E-mail Every Ten Minutes, And My Plugs Of Tobacco Were Getting Ever Larger, And My Two Drinks A Night Had Worsened To Four, And I'd Achieved Such Deep Mastery Of Computer Solitaire That My Goal Was No Longer To Win A Game But To Win Two Or More Games In A Row--a Kind Of Meta-solitaire Whose Fascination Consisted Not In Playing The Cards But In Surfing The Streaks Of Wins And Losses.

I Used To Think It Was Hard To Write, And I Still Find The Process More Or Less Unpleasant, But If I Know What I'm Doing It Rattles Along, Then The Rewrite Whips It Into Shape Rather Quickly.

The Correction, When It Finally Came, Was Not An Overnight Bursting Of A Bubble But A Much More Gentle Letdown, A Year-long Leakage Of Value From Key Financial Markets, A Contraction Too Gradual To Generate Headlines And Too Predictable To Seriously Hurt Anybody But Fools And The Working Poor.