Because the amateur owns nothing of spirit in the present, she either looks forward to a hopeful future or backward to an idyllic past. But the past evoked by the amateur is make-believe. It never existed. It's a highlight reel that she edited together from events that almost took place or should have occurred. In a way, the amateur's re-imagined past is worse when it's true. Because then it's really gone. The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present.
