No internet in the house, so here is yesterday’s entry into the blogosphere:
As I type stories are being written about a team of Thai soccer kids being rescued from a cave deep below the earth. In the room near me my family watches Sherlock Holmes. On my email a Quora debate rages as to the strongest Marvel characters. I sit here reflecting on my life and my limits, wondering why I never became the superhero my youth suggested.
I used to have this quote that went something like, “If I dropped out of society for twenty years, trained every day, I could become the ultimate badass.” I didn’t do any of that. In truth I allowed myself to continue to believe that a lack of specialization and, ultimately, dedication allowed me to still have the option to do anything. Reality suggests that I was very very wrong about this. In truth, I stopped learning and stopped improving. Instead my skillset hardened and atrophied around a very limited range of inputs and abilities. I didn’t get great at anything. My ability to get good at anything new rusted in place.
I’m knocking off much of that rust as we speak. See, the secret isn’t to drop everything to learn one thing or give up on specialization in order to wait for that perfect storm of knowing. Instead the key is to actually learn. The key is to do as Holmes does and observe and absorb it all. Learn everything around you and you will be learned.
Forty plus years to figure out the stuff I knew best as a baby.