Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?
I have always had a special affinity for libraries and librarians, for the most obvious reasons. I love books. (One of my first Jobs was shelving books at a branch of the Chicago Public Library.) Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university.
And I actually had to beg for my last tryout at NXT. Yeah, I actually had to send multiple emails to say, 'I want another tryout and there's no reason you will not hire me after this tryout.' And that was the tryout that they hired me from.
I often encountered books by academics and others who had not actually done what they had written about. They tend to create artificial simplicity; their prose doesn't have the vigor of "lived words." On the other hand, many practitioners lack the context or introspection to make their experiences and understandings transferable - and, in our time, many don't actually write the books they "author." My ideal is to unify theory and practice.
I had a tryout when I was, like, 19 and totally not prepared. I was 170 pounds with homemade gear. At that point, I realized how far I had to go to even get looked at. Then, when I was 22 or 23, I was much more prepared, and that second tryout went way better.
Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.
All our institutions rest upon business. Without it we should not have schools, colleges, churches, parks, playgrounds, pavements, books, libraries, art, music, or anything else that we value.
I think my generation has had an unbelievably easy time profiting from the world that was made for us by our parents and grandparents. We are essentially a rather frivolous generation. The Blair government was my generation's shot at power. It had some good things, but it had some flaws.
Before I wrote The Power of Now, I had a vision that I had already written the book and that it was affecting the world. I had a sense there was already a book somehow in existence. I drew a circle on a piece of paper and it said "book." Then I wrote something about the effect the book had on the world, how it influenced my life and other people's lives, and how it came to be translated into many languages affecting hundreds of thousands of people.
Before 'New Girl,' I had just been grinding in TV for a really long time. I had been testing for so many shows and not getting them. You don't know how difficult it is or how lucky you have to be - and I only say lucky because there are so many people out there - to get a show on the air and keep it going.
Apart from medieval China, which invented both paper and printing centuries before the West, the world had never seen government paper money until the colonial government of Massachusetts emitted a fiat paper issue in 1690.
I consider myself lucky to have had wonderful teachers. They expose you to a lot and basically teach you how to paint. I think of my career as a series of lucky incidents.
I recall that I had a terrible struggle finding anything antireligious in the school libraries.But many years later my family moved into a house where a woman had left a box of books containing 20 volumes on the history of the Inquisition. I found out there was a word for people like me: "heretic." I was kind of delighted to find I had an identity.
I had a tryout in Australia when I was 17 years old. The WWE contacted my trainers and asked who would be a few names that they would put forward for a tryout. My name was thrown in there, which I had only been wrestling for a year, and so I sent them back all my information after they emailed me and I was super excited.
Public libraries are our great teachers and storytellers, and are a vital adjunct to our schools. In this day of standardized and homogenized education, a library offers individual and personalized learning opportunities second to none.
I listen a lot to how people speak. I've read a great many good books in my life. I had some excellent English teachers. Surely, those things were helpful.
Our libraries are valuable centers of education, learning and enrichment for people of all ages. In recent years, libraries have taken on an increasingly important role. today's libraries are about much more than books.