December 21, 2009
Counting every step I take: it's 27 steps to the chicken coop from the house. It's 70 steps to the end of the driveway to get the newspaper. It's 12 steps from the kitchen to the bathroom, it's three steps from the kitchen table to the refrigerator. And, it's 560 steps from our front door to the top of the hill on Old Stage Road, it's 960 steps to the creek on Rockaway Hills and 2001 steps total back to our house (yes, I got a pedometer for my B-Day).

On Saturday I really tried to make it to 10,000 steps, but, alas, I only made it to 4,503 (and this was with two separate walks!), and yesterday I clocked in at a measly 3,300 on the nose. Less than a third of where I need to be.

So, what is it about this number 10,000? I seem to be shadowed by it. In October we finished our 100th issue of True West and if you figure it took 100 hours per issue, well, there you go. As I've reported for the past four years, every artist allegedly has 10,000 bad drawings in him, the Beatles spent 10,000 hours perfecting their act before they made it, Bill Gates spent 10,000 hours doing programming before he hit it big (these last two examples are from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and he claims 10,000 is the magic proficiency number). Yesterday, I read in the New York Times that a Wal-Mart assistant manager walks 9,000 steps, or five miles, a shift. Now a doctor I don't know claims we need to walk 10,000 steps a day. What gives with the ten grand?

Meanwhile, had a very nice weekend painting storm effects, like this:

Skeleton clouds like this:

And distant desert dust storms like this:

Also worked on our train cover, but I'll post that progress later.

"Everyone should walk 10,000 steps in another man's shoes, because at that distance it's pretty hard for the guy to catch up to you and get his shoes back."
—Old Vaquero Saying