![\"Kurt](\"http:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Kurt_Vonnegut_At_Typewriter-239x300.jpg\")
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\u201cWhen I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of \u201cgetting to know you\u201d questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What\u2019s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don\u2019t play any sports. I do theater, I\u2019m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.<\/p>\n
And he went, “WOW. That\u2019s amazing!” And I said, \u201cOh no, but I\u2019m not any good at ANY of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: \u201cI don\u2019t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you\u2019ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn\u2019t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could \u201cWin\u201d at them.\u201d – Kurt Vonnegut<\/p>\n
(Tom: While there is merit solely in having a wide range of fields in which you have experience and I have no argument with doing things for the simple pleasure of doing them, there is also significant value in the exigencies required to excel in a field to a professional standard. Not necessarily to be in competition with anyone but the necessary observation, discipline and learning that comes from the requirement to excel breeds a causative mindset.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWhen I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of \u201cgetting to know you\u201d questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What\u2019s your favorite subject? And I told him, no … <\/p>\n