On The Road to finishing this book

I had another gym watch this morning, which freaking sucked. These new people totally screwed the system. You're supposed to earn your way to pool watches by working gym watches, but now it's all equal and crap, so even though I spent 2 months only doing gym watches, I'm still doing them. The only pros about this situation is 1) i get to lift/work out a lot since I have to be there anyway, and 2) without the need for taking temperatures, I have even more time on my hand during watch, which I fill with reading my books.

I went to Barnes & Noble and bought some books about a month ago. This was during my time of inspiration where I decided I was going to take it upon myself to read more and write more because I keep hearing over and over again from professional writers that the only way to become a better writer is to read and write. But anyway, so I bought "Catcher in the Rye", "On the Road", "The Great Gatsby", and this book of short stories written by J.D. Salinger. I read "Catcher" pretty fast, it being my favorite book and all since the 9th grade, and I read J.D. Salinger's book of short stories, which proved to me that Salinger really had nothing real to say at all, but he just liked telling stories (kind of the way I see Quentin Tarantino). So I start on "On the Road".

My buddy RVD tells me good things about this book, and of course I read great things about this book online through reviews, professional and personal, which is why I picked it up. But then I start reading it in my free time at home (which I have a lot of). I get bored with the book. I'm trying to get in the mind set, channel all the words people used to describe the book, but I just cant do it. This crap is boring me. So I put it down, never really got back to it. Then I start getting scheduled with these freaking gym watches and have like 2 extra hours to kill, so I start reading the book again (I didnt want it to go to waste. It cost $14). Now, it starts to make sense to me.

I read something like 150 pages today during watch, and I just kind of rolled with it. The way you're supposed to roll with a book that is, at the very least, somewhat interesting to you. I start making connections between myself and Sal, the protagonist, with him struggling between wanting to go on the adventure and wanting to settle down in life, and his best friends arent making it easy for him to settle. I kind of feel the same way, except, unlike Sal, I dont go on the adventures. I took the other road. I always take the other road. I settle down, I choose the steady life; I'm not rip-roaring all through the country, living these experiences that leave you poor and miserable, but fills your being with a smile for having lived life. There's a lot of supporting characters throughout the book who deal with this theme, and I guess in the end, maybe that's what the Beat Generation was all about. I actually dont know anything about the Beat Generation except that they were at their height right after WWII and that Jack Kerouac was their hero and gave them a voice with this very book. But maybe it has something to do with the struggle I mentioned before. If that's the case, then times have not changed for me. I still have that struggle within myself, except like I said, I choose a different path; and I think I'll probably just keep going through life choosing this path because I cant deal with the low moments of the other path that ultimately also make the path worthwhile. So until I can muster the courage to do so, the beat will have to just go on (pun entirely intended since I spent like 3 minutes trying to figure out how to end the entry like that).

PS: Sal is from NYC, and it got me thinking about wanting to live in NYC again. And THAT led me to thinking that the experience from NYC that I want is maybe not the stereotypical experience from NYC that everyone else usually thinks of, but I'll save that for another time. Just remind me to get back to it, or else I never will.