Good Luck on the Job

For much of your life, you've put forth a concentrated effort into learning how to do one thing well. You continue to do so with the belief that doing one thing well can lead you in the direction of doing one or two other things within the framework of wellness. And part of your own interior monologue plays with the notion that being able to do one thing beyond ordinary may lead you toward being good at living.

You've had friends, classmates, colleagues who themselves appear able to do more than one thing well, even to the point at embodying those qualities associated with being a good person. 

Even as you write, your thoughts go to a friend now living in Utah who does well at the one thing you're looking to succeed in, at the same time being a gifted parent and step parent, a gifted teacher, and a person with admirable abilities in gardening and landscape projects.

You've had two similar individuals as close friends. These persons seemed to succeed without trying. Worse yet, they also appeared to be casting about for yet other things in which they could excel.

Because you've seen this type of individual at various age platforms, extending from late teens well on into the eighth decade, you've learned from experience that such individuals have little in common except one significant trait: each is marked by laser intensity focus kindness and empathy. You've known only one individual of staggering, multi-talented ability who was what most persons would write off a a hopeless asshole.

Because being accomplished at the one thing you wish to be focused on requires so much energy and concentration as well as a surrender to the multifarious whims of Reality, you can see where your attempts could have distracted you variously from being a responsive son, a supportive mate, a loyal friend. You may on reflection have reason to consider yourself more of an asshole than you in fact are. 

This algorithm applies to your overall self as a person; it has more than once occurred to you while considering how far you need to go to become accomplished at the one thing you wish to be accomplished at, that you are perhaps not so far behind the learning tide as you think.

At such times, you not only appreciate the diverse range of individuals you know to be accomplished at one thing, you recognize from the variety of your experiences how rare it is to meet a person who is good--with or without effort--at one thing. You sometimes wonder if meanness of spirit has caused you to believe there are multitudes of individuals who are not good at even one thing.

Your take away from all this is the awareness that in order to be as skilled and insightful a storyteller as you wish to be, you need to spend some time working at such traits as empathy, consideration, and a willingness to deliver your judgments more through your own actions than your own words.