One of my many coworkers is a senior guy named Jim who works the afternoon shift on West Coast departures. When I worked afternoons, I enjoyed being his “pod-mate” (our office is arranged in “pods” of 3 desks each) because he was a great storyteller and had dozens of stories to tell. At some point he decided to collect many of his stories into a book. After a long time writing and refining his book, he finally published The Path of Least Resistance last year through a self-publishing company. Follow the link to buy a copy on Amazon so he’ll get a couple extra bucks in royalties. I’m about halfway through my copy and am really enjoying it! His flair for storytelling and his personality definitely come through in his writing. I admire both his dedication and his talent. Just writing anything of quality takes hard work, much less refining one’s entire life into a book-length collection of stories that both entertain the reader and support any kind of thesis. Self-publishing seems to be increasingly popular these days. You decide which services you want, pay the publishing company a fee, and provide the manuscript. They lay out and print your book and can also distribute or even market the book for you.

Jim’s success made me wonder if I would ever have the guts and dedication to write an autobiography, and whether anyone other than my mom would actually buy it. I’ve had a fairly interesting life I suppose, and I’ve been told by a few people that I have some talent. But an entire book full of stories about me? As fun as it might be, I don’t think I’m up for it right now. My own Path of Least Resistance currently involves simply enjoying the rest of Jim’s book and wondering, deep inside, whether someday I might follow in his footsteps.

Jenny and I played a fun new game this weekend called Rock Band. It’s like Guitar Hero but takes the experience even further by adding other instruments and vocals to create, well, a rock band. Each person has an electronic “instrument”, either a guitar, drum kit, or microphone. You choose a song together from over 60 available songs. Then you “play” it by hitting the buttons on the guitar while strumming, hitting the drum pads, or singing as directed by the scrolling musical “score” on the screen. It’s fun to watch, even more fun to play, and highly addictive, especially when you invite your friends and family over and take turns on the different parts. For example, I played drums on the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”, guitar on The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” and sang vocals on Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz”. You can also add a second guitar for the bass part. It’s an absolute blast! Unfortunately, the Rock Band set were were using belongs to Jenny’s department and will be used for events, so we have to give it back. We brought it home to unlock as many songs as we could before the first event. We hope to get our own set later. When we do, you need to come over and rock out with us!