Dabbling vs. Focusing
Last night was the end of the year for children's choir. We had our "sharing program" where each choir performed for parents and the other choirs. I'll enjoy having the extra free time, but I think I'll miss my kids a bit. One of them made a really sweet thank-you card for me, which is now on my refrigerator. If I do this again next year, I think I'll stay with this age group. I seem to be on the same wavelength with kindergarteners and preschoolers. I seem to "get" them and understand how they think better than I do with older kids. I don't know what that says about me that four and five-year-olds are my kindred spirits.
But I don't have anywhere to go or anything else pressing to do today, so I can really focus on the book revisions today. I'm about a quarter of the way through the book -- sort of. I keep thinking of things that send me back to fix things earlier. Today I've got the whole afternoon and then the evening, aside from a TV break for The Office and two episodes of Parks and Recreation.
That need for days when I can really focus reminds me of a conversation I had on Sunday with one of the guys from the choir (the adult one, not the little kids). We were talking about specializing versus dabbling, how to really be good at something, you have to focus on it instead of spreading yourself too thin. One of my problems has always been that I've been a dabbler. I'm too interested in too many things to focus on any one thing well enough to become truly outstanding at it. And I've been more or less equally talented at those things, so there was no one clear-cut thing that I should focus on. When I was a kid, I was always flitting from one activity to another, and I'd feel trapped if I had to spend too much time on any one thing. There was dance and gymnastics and scouts and then later band and choir and then some more gymnastics and a little dance and then in high school there was band, speech, drama, newspaper and yearbook. I did fairly well in all those things but wasn't truly outstanding. I was first-chair oboe in band (well, there were only two of us), but didn't make all-region band. I had roles in school plays but wasn't a star. I got a fair amount of speech and drama ribbons at competitions, but didn't make it to regionals and didn't win a major competition. I did go to regionals a couple of times in journalism competitions and was a newspaper assistant editor and yearbook section editor, so I guess I came closer to excelling there, and that had a lot to do with my choice of major in college.
I was just as bad in college. I did fencing, dance (ballet and ballroom), made an attempt to get back into gymnastics, took voice lessons, worked on the university newspaper, was involved in a number of campus committees, was in a service organization that required volunteer work, and then there were the things required for my degree, like working at the TV station.
When I look at the kids here who are really excelling at stuff, I kind of freak out on their behalf. The girls dancing at a high level are taking four to five classes a week. I felt oppressed when I was taking two classes a week. The ones going places in gymnastics are doing it every day, for hours. I'd have felt suffocated. I might have been able to devote that kind of time to music if I'd had the opportunities. I practiced a lot when I was first learning to play an instrument and didn't mind doing so. I even dropped most of my other activities during that time. But I was mostly self-taught. The way they taught you to play an instrument was mostly to give you a fingering chart. I don't know what I could have done with real instruction. I seem to have a lot of natural talent for singing, but didn't have a chance to even start exploring that until I was in college, when it was probably too late already, since you have to audition to get into music programs, and it would have required a lot of training to even get in.
But then I realized that all this dabbling was actually focusing for a writer. You need all that kind of input from trying new things and exploring in order to have something to write about. Even if I don't use the actual activities in a book, the activities bring me in contact with a variety of people, which is important for helping create characters. I probably should focus a bit more time on writing, but that time needs to come from my "wasting" time instead of from my extracurricular activities. The dance is my form of exercise, what I do instead of going to the gym. I'm trying to do it well enough to make it fun and to make sure I don't hurt myself, but I have no illusions of ever doing anything with it. Singing is my form of worship. I would kind of like to see what I could really do with it if I worked at it and got some kind of training, and I enjoy it enough that I might not even feel oppressed from having to devote time to it, but at the same time, I'm not sure what the payoff could be from devoting that time, especially at my age. I could still pass for a lot younger on stage, but I'm still beyond the age for most musical theater roles -- and look way too young for the older roles. I guess I haven't yet aged out of opera, since they have women older than I am (and who look it) playing teenagers, but I don't see myself having any kind of grand opera career. I know of too many people with the training and the voices who haven't been able to break in.
There's something kind of liberating about this realization. I've reached an age where I'm free to dabble in whatever interests me since I'm beyond being able to really do anything with it. And all of it feeds into my writing, which is the one thing that I don't think has yet bored me and that I'm willing to spend hours every day working on. So I can work on learning to play the piano a little without worrying about ever making it to Carnegie hall. I can take ballet classes because they're fun. I can sing in the choir and maybe look for other opportunities there. I can learn to cook new things. I can try knitting and sewing or maybe photography and art. And as long as I'm still putting in serious writing time, all that stuff will help me be a better writer.
But I don't have anywhere to go or anything else pressing to do today, so I can really focus on the book revisions today. I'm about a quarter of the way through the book -- sort of. I keep thinking of things that send me back to fix things earlier. Today I've got the whole afternoon and then the evening, aside from a TV break for The Office and two episodes of Parks and Recreation.
That need for days when I can really focus reminds me of a conversation I had on Sunday with one of the guys from the choir (the adult one, not the little kids). We were talking about specializing versus dabbling, how to really be good at something, you have to focus on it instead of spreading yourself too thin. One of my problems has always been that I've been a dabbler. I'm too interested in too many things to focus on any one thing well enough to become truly outstanding at it. And I've been more or less equally talented at those things, so there was no one clear-cut thing that I should focus on. When I was a kid, I was always flitting from one activity to another, and I'd feel trapped if I had to spend too much time on any one thing. There was dance and gymnastics and scouts and then later band and choir and then some more gymnastics and a little dance and then in high school there was band, speech, drama, newspaper and yearbook. I did fairly well in all those things but wasn't truly outstanding. I was first-chair oboe in band (well, there were only two of us), but didn't make all-region band. I had roles in school plays but wasn't a star. I got a fair amount of speech and drama ribbons at competitions, but didn't make it to regionals and didn't win a major competition. I did go to regionals a couple of times in journalism competitions and was a newspaper assistant editor and yearbook section editor, so I guess I came closer to excelling there, and that had a lot to do with my choice of major in college.
I was just as bad in college. I did fencing, dance (ballet and ballroom), made an attempt to get back into gymnastics, took voice lessons, worked on the university newspaper, was involved in a number of campus committees, was in a service organization that required volunteer work, and then there were the things required for my degree, like working at the TV station.
When I look at the kids here who are really excelling at stuff, I kind of freak out on their behalf. The girls dancing at a high level are taking four to five classes a week. I felt oppressed when I was taking two classes a week. The ones going places in gymnastics are doing it every day, for hours. I'd have felt suffocated. I might have been able to devote that kind of time to music if I'd had the opportunities. I practiced a lot when I was first learning to play an instrument and didn't mind doing so. I even dropped most of my other activities during that time. But I was mostly self-taught. The way they taught you to play an instrument was mostly to give you a fingering chart. I don't know what I could have done with real instruction. I seem to have a lot of natural talent for singing, but didn't have a chance to even start exploring that until I was in college, when it was probably too late already, since you have to audition to get into music programs, and it would have required a lot of training to even get in.
But then I realized that all this dabbling was actually focusing for a writer. You need all that kind of input from trying new things and exploring in order to have something to write about. Even if I don't use the actual activities in a book, the activities bring me in contact with a variety of people, which is important for helping create characters. I probably should focus a bit more time on writing, but that time needs to come from my "wasting" time instead of from my extracurricular activities. The dance is my form of exercise, what I do instead of going to the gym. I'm trying to do it well enough to make it fun and to make sure I don't hurt myself, but I have no illusions of ever doing anything with it. Singing is my form of worship. I would kind of like to see what I could really do with it if I worked at it and got some kind of training, and I enjoy it enough that I might not even feel oppressed from having to devote time to it, but at the same time, I'm not sure what the payoff could be from devoting that time, especially at my age. I could still pass for a lot younger on stage, but I'm still beyond the age for most musical theater roles -- and look way too young for the older roles. I guess I haven't yet aged out of opera, since they have women older than I am (and who look it) playing teenagers, but I don't see myself having any kind of grand opera career. I know of too many people with the training and the voices who haven't been able to break in.
There's something kind of liberating about this realization. I've reached an age where I'm free to dabble in whatever interests me since I'm beyond being able to really do anything with it. And all of it feeds into my writing, which is the one thing that I don't think has yet bored me and that I'm willing to spend hours every day working on. So I can work on learning to play the piano a little without worrying about ever making it to Carnegie hall. I can take ballet classes because they're fun. I can sing in the choir and maybe look for other opportunities there. I can learn to cook new things. I can try knitting and sewing or maybe photography and art. And as long as I'm still putting in serious writing time, all that stuff will help me be a better writer.
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