The last few days — in between working on projects — I’ve found myself just staring at the screen, pointlessly browsing Twitter, closing Twitter and then immediately opening again. Today I caught myself and thought bollocks to this bullshit. What am i doing? So I forced myself to put my coat on and go out to my favourite local deli, take a copy of The New Yorker and my notebook and just go and sit and read and watch and listen and write. I read about Muslim history tours in New York. I heard Derek — a deli regular — saying Elvis was alive and well and working in a chippy in Blackburn. He just wanted a quiet life. I read a great article on the director Nicole Holofcener and how James Gandolfini has insecurities about being a leading man. All of this was so much richer than most of the crap I see on Twitter and it got me out of my self imposed routine of blindly browsing a series of pixels pretending to be something interesting.