twenty-seven years and one million words
So I mowed the lawn in about ten minutes. My wrist is sore but I expect I'll toughen up.
Mari's off to the Costco today for hours of hell, I guess I'll have to work out to do with roughly half a garbage bag's worth of grass clippings.
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.
—John Gardner