I’ve always taken pride in being a generalist. Robert Heinlein, in one of the few quotes of his that I like, said “Specialization is for insects,” and for myself, this feels like truth. For me, it fits.
While I am thoroughly capable of obsessing about…well, about pretty much anything…I am not capable of concentrating on one topic, to the exclusion of all others, for the years it would take to become an expert. My freewheeling curiosity is impossible to constrain lest it becomes bored, not through having learned all there is on a topic (far from it), but because my mind tends to wander as I wonder, leading me astray from the path on which I began.
As a result, my history is littered with cobwebbed interests and skills, all of which were at one time a grand passion but which now have been shunted to the side by the necessities of surviving in our rapid-fire and increasingly frenetic world. So, while I can play a concerto, compose a sonnet, cure a pork belly, repair a pocket watch, restore a fountain pen, landscape a garden, tune a car (or a piano, for that matter), cook a goose, shoot an arrow, renovate a kitchen, arrange flowers, write a novel, and make beer, I am at best (by my standards) a journeyman in these subjects, and far from expert.
Unfortunately, generalization is not a valuable commodity in today’s world. Where once being a “Renaissance man” was a thing to be admired, now it is an anomaly, a throwback to an earlier time, anachronistic and useless outside of dinner parties and a guest spot on QI.
Normally, none of this bothers me, but this past year has been a tough go, fraught with missteps and failures, chock-a-block with mediocre results born of my mediocre talents. In many cases, were I to do as my grammar school teachers instructed and simply “apply myself,” I might be able to acquire the expertise needed to achieve my desired goals, be they in the kitchen, in the garden, or in the writing studio.
This isn’t a pity party, though. Nope. Check your sympathy at the door. I don’t need it. Thanks, but no thanks.
I don’t need sympathy because, when I begin to doubt myself like this, it’s because I’m judging myself by yardsticks of others instead of by my own, and that’s a sure sign I need to step back and reevaluate.
I’m a generalist, and I prefer it that way. I just need to come to terms with the ramifications, and remind myself of the advantages that decision brings.
This above all: to thine own self be true…
k
As regular readers know, I have what I call The 40-Page Dropkick Rule. When I begin reading a book, it has forty pages to grab me, draw me in, and make me want to keep reading. For exceptionally long books, the forty page limit can be extended to fifty, sometimes eighty. Regardless the limit, if I’m not hooked by that time, the book gets tossed aside.
I’ve been having difficulty selecting topics for my blog posts lately.
I was about halfway through Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Goldfinch, when I stumbled while reading the following:
Late winter is my “difficult” season. Maybe it’s Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe it’s the combination of allergies and holiday letdown. This year, it’s also the ongoing can’t-look-away train wreck that is our electoral process. Either way, I’ve been depressed and unmotivated for the past couple of months.
I thought this was only a problem with men of my generation and older, but (surprisingly) I’ve heard complaints from enough young folks that I’m now convinced a fair fraction of hipster males also exhibit this…deficit.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 