{"id":1783,"date":"2012-06-29T11:43:46","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T18:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=1783"},"modified":"2012-06-29T12:41:22","modified_gmt":"2012-06-29T19:41:22","slug":"so-what-have-you-done-lately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2012\/06\/so-what-have-you-done-lately\/","title":{"rendered":"So what have you done lately?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Picked up Run Rabbit Run<\/em> by John Updike. THis book shows up on the must-read lists with regularity and I thought I should give it a try.<\/p>\n

This is my second try. The first try I choked on the main character. His disaffection reminded me of Catcher in the Rye,<\/em> whose main character I find repulsive.<\/p>\n

But, it is highly recommended and I needed a new book. So. Take two.<\/p>\n

I was telling Chris about the book. “I am still not sure I am going to like it, but the prose is beautiful.”<\/p>\n

“What’s it about?”<\/p>\n

“well, the main character is mourning the fact that his best days are behind him. He was a basketball star in high school,” I tell him.<\/p>\n

“That’s a well-worn theme.”<\/p>\n

I am not so sure it is, not in books anyway. I think it comes up a lot in movies, but I don’t think it does in books.<\/p>\n

It is certainly not common in Victorian literature. Austen and Dickens were very forward-looking. \u00a0And Shakespeare was a man of the moment, not much nostalgia in his works.<\/p>\n

The Great Gatsby <\/em>was not about the past.<\/p>\n

It would seem that this back-of-the-hand-to-the-forehead thing started with the Baby Boomer generation.<\/p>\n

The generation that went to fight world war 2, they did not have that tradition of mourning their best days behind them.<\/p>\n

However. However.<\/p>\n

It is a serious thing to contemplate. What is it, to come to the conclusion that your best work is behind you, never to be realized again.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this for TED<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She wrote a super best-seller book. And has this question after “Aren’t you afraid that you are never going to be able to top that?”<\/p>\n

What if the world runs out of opportunities for greatness?<\/p>\n

Rabbit, in this book, says it in a conversation. His pastor asks him:<\/p>\n

What makes you think you are different?<\/p>\n

“You think there is no answer to that, but I have one. I once did something exceptional. I was a first rate ball player. Once you’ve been first rate at something, it takes the kick out of being second rate”<\/p>\n

What a problem! is doing something exceptional the same sort of thing as the curse of winning the lottery? Nobody is happier after winning the lottery.<\/p>\n

Is achieving greatness something to protect yourself against?<\/p>\n

There is a characteristic to the boomer generation that they are aware of their co-horts. They are a group, a feel their size and the eyes upon them.<\/p>\n

So, Rabbit did something not merely exceptional, but popularly applauded. So did Elizabeth Gilbert when she wrote her best-seller.<\/p>\n

I am not actually that impressed with Gilbert’s book. I don’t think it is a beautifully written book. But people bought a lot of copies.<\/p>\n

Being popular is a particular kind of exceptionalism. But it is not the only measure of excellence. In fact, it may very well be a poor measure of excellence.<\/p>\n

As I think about what I’ve done and what I plan to do with my life, I know that what I am most proud of is not what is best recieved.<\/p>\n

I have to use my internal measure. What did I do today that I consider excellent work? If I am satisfied with and pleased with what I have done, then my life is good. If my satisfaction was tied to other people’s reaction, then I would be in great danger of never achieving it.<\/p>\n

How do I know if I am doing a good job? I have to be the judge of that.<\/p>\n

And if I don’t know how to improve my craft, and do better work over time then I would have to be worried.<\/p>\n

I may have gotten a standing ovation last week, or years ago. But if I can sit down and bang out an essay, a blogpost or a piano piece alone in my home that I know is better than anything I’ve ever done, I’m getting better.<\/p>\n

I like ovations. But they are not required<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picked up Run Rabbit Run by John Updike. THis book shows up on the must-read lists with regularity and I thought I should give it a try. This is my second try. The first try I choked on the main … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1783"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1785,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1783\/revisions\/1785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}