{"id":12066,"date":"2009-12-01T18:18:33","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T18:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/01\/from-the-journal-of-a-discarded-man\/"},"modified":"2009-12-01T18:18:33","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T18:18:33","slug":"from-the-journal-of-a-discarded-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/01\/from-the-journal-of-a-discarded-man\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Journal of a Discarded Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love reading journals, both of the famous and of the obscure. Among the latter, I find my own especially intriguing for some reason. Here is an excerpt from Journal of a Discarded Man<\/strong> by one Walter Morris. He was in his mid-fifties at the time of this entry and has recently lost his job:<\/font><\/p>\n

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29 December 1962, Saturday. Five more makes sixty. This thing is moving right along. At twenty-one I thought I was going to be twenty-one forever.("The feeling of immortality in youth," as old Hazlitt put it.) At thirty, one is taken aback; at forty, startled; at fifty, incredulous and depressed. Midway between fifty and sixty, time\u2019s fleet foot seems fully revealed and I see no logical reason for being taken by surprise from now on out \u2013 but who\u2019s logical? Today is a day for homilies and platitudes, old saws and bitter-sweet droppings. "If I had to do it all over again. . ." "If I knew then what I know now. . ." These pious exercises are all right, though. They take us away from our close work and present a vista, and in this focus Everyman is a philosopher.<\/font><\/p>\n

All right. If I had to do it over again, I\u2019d learn a trade (for bread and butter) and for the high, orbital shot I\u2019d concentrate on painting. The pip-squeak world of the white-collar employee I\u2019d avoid like the plague. This is hindsight, pure, fatuous and futile. . . (From Michael Rubin, Men Without Masks: Writings from the Journals of Modern Men<\/strong>, Addison-Wesley, 1980, p. 194.)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love reading journals, both of the famous and of the obscure. Among the latter, I find my own especially intriguing for some reason. Here is an excerpt from Journal of a Discarded Man by one Walter Morris. He was in his mid-fifties at the time of this entry and has recently lost his job: … Continue reading “From the Journal of a Discarded Man”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,769],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-matters","category-morris-walter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}