GRAVITY SEVENTEEN -- Friday, October 2, 1992

I apologize for the length of yesterday's note. None of you commented on it, which is a first for a more-than-four-screener, and I guess that means we're winnowing down to people who read quickly, or skim. (Twenty people have dropped off the list to date. A few others haven't picked up their mail yet.)

Today's will be short. I have to pass a math exam on Monday, or I won't graduate on Founder's Day. My priorities are quite clear, though in my heart of hearts know that this Time Time Time Time Time Time Time anxiety apparent in all of our lives, particularly in the academic environment, is a bit over played. My only qualification for saying that is last spring semester. Taking eighteen credits, three of which was for a pretty heavily stacked graduate course, and another three for an independent project that required a vast amount of time, and another three for a writing intensive course for which I was more intensive than required, I had a pretty full agenda. However, I still found time to do the right thing and put untold numbers of hours into helping a campus publication get off the ground. Just yesterday I received my first copy at a public unveiling. It was an enormously satisfying experience. Had I known just how satisfying, I wouldn't have called myself crazy for spending so much time on it these last seven months (easily more than a thousand hours). It's a warm feeling to know I had a vital part in bringing a new Lehigh showcase into being. It's something that I'll always remember. And I managed to make dean's list anyway last semester, which was a personal goal of mine given my spotty academic record from my earlier years at Lehigh.

Somehow I found the time.

Time is a relative thing, I've found. There was one week last semester when I let the anxiety get to me, and then I had no time. I also got nothing done. But the times when I simply did what was right in front of me, and fooled myself into thinking that this one next right thing was all there was, I had no problems. It was all quite exciting, and this attitude carried me.

Why am I telling you this? I think there's some terribly important secret
here, but I'm not sure what it is yet. It most certainly has to do with the
third leg of this discussion, one I haven't delved into very much, the Nine Principles part of the plan. First there's the Technology part, which we've spent most of our time on so far. Then there's the Marketing The New Medium side of the plan, which I've lightly touched on. Beyond that, and to my mind the most interesting part of the three, is the lifestyle that now becomes possible with this new technology and medium. I had almost ventured into this when I promised to tell you how creativists could become financially self-sufficient from the new electronic medium.

Tomorrow: just what I mean by the term 'creativist'.

From: Frank Harvey , Gordon Bearn , Bob Barnes