How to Fail, Part 3: Talent vs. Hard Work

Smart.  Talented.  Special.  Gifted.  Bright. Stupid.  Unskilled.  Ordinary.  Average.  Dull. If you’re not one, you must be the other, right? No:  there’s a third set of descriptions that’s better than both of the ones above, and it goes like this: Hard worker.  Dedicated.  Pays attention.  Asks questions.  Practices. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I am going to

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Game Night

Yesterday was another good day.  We started out with having Fry over to play magic.  None of the three of us have played magic for years, and none of us played it very seriously.  This belies, however, the thoroughness with which Fry learns and assimilates rules for any given circumstance.  If we lived closer to

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Good Enough

I have what is probably a fairly typical writer’s relationship with what is “good enough,” which is to say, “It’s not good enough.” Whatever it is. In some ways, this is a good thing, and I don’t want to lose it entirely; right now, it’s that nudge in my brain that’s saying, “Okay, you now

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How to Fail, Part 1: Why is failing so hard?

I don’t know…I have visions of people breaking down in tears…”How could you say something so harsh?!?” — What’s a normal response to failure? Upset, despair, grief, horror, shame…? What’s an abnormal response to failure? Celebration!  Amazement!  Breaking out the champagne! And so we try to avoid failure and gravitate toward success, because failure feels

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