Sorry about the lapse in time. Dan Pink says I should write 500 words a day before I do anything else. Unfortunately, I am not a professional writer at this time.
And here is the response: So, instead of beating myself up about how much time I have missed and how few words I have written since December, I am working on a new habit. The action I choose to cultivate is self-forgiveness and living in the now. This attitude, if I can do it, is step one of the Amateur's Renaissance.
The second step is to enjoy being non-World-Class as a number of things. Rather than self-loathing at supposed weakness, how about collecting topical acquaintances? The Rebirth of the Notion that being an Amateur is okay, and, perhaps, even better for making interpersonal connections.
Step three, which is as far as I have gotten in my thinking, is that we are at our best when we are learning, not necessarily when we have mastered, something (if mastery ever truly comes). The memory I have created of my time in college and grad school, sanitized by selective discarding of the negative over time, has become one of my favorites. I think that is because classes encouraged us to revel in the amateur status granted by a semester or two of familiarity. It gave us stuff to talk about, a common vocabulary.
So, revel in the new and non-mastered! Become a part-time Bob DaVinci or Joe Einstein. Your more-famous cousins simply reveled in what they knew to be true: joyful, communal amateur status is much more rewarding than singular, and often grumpy, mastery.
And here is the response: So, instead of beating myself up about how much time I have missed and how few words I have written since December, I am working on a new habit. The action I choose to cultivate is self-forgiveness and living in the now. This attitude, if I can do it, is step one of the Amateur's Renaissance.
The second step is to enjoy being non-World-Class as a number of things. Rather than self-loathing at supposed weakness, how about collecting topical acquaintances? The Rebirth of the Notion that being an Amateur is okay, and, perhaps, even better for making interpersonal connections.
Step three, which is as far as I have gotten in my thinking, is that we are at our best when we are learning, not necessarily when we have mastered, something (if mastery ever truly comes). The memory I have created of my time in college and grad school, sanitized by selective discarding of the negative over time, has become one of my favorites. I think that is because classes encouraged us to revel in the amateur status granted by a semester or two of familiarity. It gave us stuff to talk about, a common vocabulary.
So, revel in the new and non-mastered! Become a part-time Bob DaVinci or Joe Einstein. Your more-famous cousins simply reveled in what they knew to be true: joyful, communal amateur status is much more rewarding than singular, and often grumpy, mastery.
