Ray Milland had his Lost Weekend.
I had my Lost Month in July. Running Just For Laughs essentially eliminates 30 days of "real life" from my calendar.
I write this on Saturday, August 6 from the confines of my home office/library, a once neat and orderly room now littered with piles of magazines (a stack rising 18 inches high), mail, bills, business cards, receipts, books and assorted miscellany. I am spending the day de-cluttering, re-organizing and re-configuring.
By the time this is posted (Monday, 9:15 a.m.), the room will be back in its usual state; my driver's license and health card will be renewed; my synagogue membership, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Wired subscriptions paid; and my lesson learned.
Said lesson comes from a book given to me by my friend Yanik Silver when I gave a speech for his entrepreneur group in Washington D.C. back in June, and which I only got around to looking at today (it was buried under the magazines).
The book is called "Building A Great Business," and it's about the Zingerman's food conglomerate of Ann Arbor, Michigan (itself an incredible story, but I digress). In it, author Ari Weizweig quotes from essayist Logan Pearsall Smith, whose quote struck me like lightning after spending my lost month with some of the richest, most influential and powerful people in showbusiness, both here and abroad. Without any further ado:
"There are two things to aim at in life:
first, to get what you want,
and after that, to enjoy it.
"Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second."
And with that, I'm off to enjoy August. Or at least try to...