Get Action
Tags: books
Theodore Roosevelt was an unstoppable force of nature. He transformed from a scrawny child to an amateur boxer. He was a taxidermist, a bird expert, a renowned author of The Naval War of 1812, all before graduating from Harvard.
He chased three men who stole his boat down an icy river for three days after first building a makeshift boat to start the journey. He then spent over a week escorting the men to prison rather than hanging them on the spot.
He led the change up San Juan Hill, and he was a politician with theatrical flair. He entertained himself with judo lessons and stick fights between appointments in the White House.
He voraciously read, often during appointments if his guest couldn’t hold his attention.
… and I’m not even done reading his three part biography by Edmund Morris. At some point I’ll read about him getting shot and giving a speech before seeking medical attention.
Roosevelt didn’t tolerate idle time. During a patience trying time of his presidency he admonished a Rough Rider colleague to “Get action. Do things; be sane; don’t fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.”
That sort of quote sounded like wallpaper material to me, so I put one together and made it my default browser home page. It greets me when I open a new tab and steers me toward interesting work rather than trivial distractions.
You can grab the full sized jpeg or the original XCF file.
If you’d like to read more about Roosevelt, I can’t stress how much I’ve enjoyed the first half of the following trilogy: