don't forget how to be interesting
I am neck-deep in my manuscript, with my book deadline coming in fast — I’m supposed to submit it in about five weeks, and for two of those weeks I’m traveling. So I’m not gonna lie, I’m a bit panicked. I’ve been writing and editing all weekend long, and will be doing so for the foreseeable future. I’ll keep trying to keep sending these weekly missives, but they may be in abbreviated form. I hope you understand.
For this week, though, I wanted to share a quotation I found online. It’s been attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, and I was going to use it as a reference for the book, but I can’t find anything that confirms it’s authentic. Still, given that I’m writing a book about intentional amateurism, I thought it was pretty great, so I I figured I’d share it with you:
When 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 “getting to know you” questions you ask young people:
“Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject?”
And I told him, “No I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, and I used to take art classes.”
And he went, “WOW. That’s amazing!”
And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”
He then said something that I will never forget, which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before:
“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve 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.”
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t 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 “win” at them.
— Kurt Vonnegut (?)
I one-hundred-percent believe this: the more we attempt, experiment, and experience (even when we totally suck), the more interesting we become, the more expansive we become, the more more we become. And I can’t wait to share my thoughts with you about all of this, come Fall 2025.
In the meantime, my wish for us this week: may we each try something really fun, or energizing, or enlightening, even if we’re really bad at it. And in doing so, may we remember how to be interesting.
don't forget to mark the milestones.