I wrote this one the other day using Steppenwolf. Not my favorite book but Hesse is obviously better than me and it was all I had on hand at the hostel where I’m staying.

The day went by just as days go by. I killed it with my empty and repetitive way of life. I made love to Megan and read a few more pages of Dante. I tanned on the beach like all the other tourists. I had I got a headache and ordered a few drinks to soothe it. We got shrimp cocktails for lunch at a tiki bar on the shore. The phone had rang three times in the hotel, probably Harry with some unbelievable network opportunity to tell me about, which I ignored. I did my breathing exercises, but I didn’t feel like doing my thought exercises. I swam laps in the resort pool for an hour, and got out feeling exhilarated and refreshed. It really felt great. So did making love to Megan, and so did reading Dante. But all in all it hadn’t exactly been a day in heaven. No, it hadn’t even been a day brightened by happiness or joy. Really it had just been one of those days which for a long time now have made up my life. The moderately pleasant, the entirely bearable and tolerable, lukewarm days of a pathetic middle-aged man. Days without much pain, without any stress, without worry, without despair. Days in which the idea of swimming out into the ocean without swimming back could be considered without agitation or anxiety, quietly and matter-of-factly.

I replaced Steppenwolf with Don Draper.