Meanwhile, Phil is famous! He's on the front page of the local newspaper...
Phil is a very fine public speaker, and could have been an amazing demagogue: he knows almost too much about how people tick (and how to make them tick). It's budget (cut) season again, and with a daughter working at the library and decades of experience as a librarian himself, he went along to the City Council meeting and spoke eloquently and persuasively about why the City should not cut the library's already tiny budget. Evidently he made quite a splash: his presentation was widely cited as key in the Council's decision not to cut the Library budget this year.
I'm proud of him, and it's also thought-provoking and admirable to me that Phil doesn't choose to do very much of this. He knows he's very good at it, but he doesn't enjoy it very much. Generally, Phil is very successful at focusing on what he does love to do, and doing that. Quite a radical choice, when so often the message is that if you have a talent, you are obligated to use it.
I have two or three recipes backed up now that I haven't been able to photograph, plus more holiday goodies. I woke up later than expected this morning, the horror of which it's taken me most of the day to recover from. I have a "packet" due to my mentor tomorrow and an appointment in the morning. I realized today that I have a whole lot more work to do than even I realized for my Linguistics course.
What am I doing on here?
Apologies for this frazzled posting. What do you think? Should someone use a talent they have, or should they choose to do what they enjoy?
Yay Phil! The library thanks you!
ReplyDeleteAnd lovely Ela, take a deep breath, you're wonderful.
I used to have a knack for Spanish. I even taught it to high schoolers for a while. But the truth is, I don't like travel, or singing, or dancing, or interacting with strangers (what else is FOREIGN language about?) that much. So I kind of let my skills wither and now I don't do much, unless I'm in a Spanish-speaking country or if one of the parents of my daughter's classmates needs a translation (there's a lot of Mexican families at her school).
ReplyDeleteSo, I guess I'm saying, no. You don't need to follow every path that might be a good one. I could have been a very good Spanish teacher - I enjoy teaching and my students liked me and I liked the structure of my days. But I'm much happier being a writer.
Thanks so much, Erin--packet is now in, so deep breath duly taken.
ReplyDeletelove
Ela
Carrie, I have to agree with you, except that FOREIGN language is about reading its literature as well as all the dancy party stuff!
ReplyDeleteYes, if I followed that reasoning, I'd be a Classics professor, and I'm much happier this way, I think...
love
Ela
I love Neruda as well. And Garcia Marquez and Allende and Valenzuela and so many others. But the pleasure of not having to read in translation? This is not typically a topic for American high school students. Instead you have to teach them to ask directions or if they can go to the bathroom and conjugate verbs until you feel like the language is some kind of torture victim, being flogged with a hose like Billy Collins says in one of his poems.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I just love my mother tongue too much. I like comparing it to Spanish, but I'm so out of my element when I can't use the slang and expressions I like, the references I like. I don't feel like I can be my whole personality. This sounds kind of petty and babyish, but a career does tend to dominate one's brain pan in that way, so I'm glad to have left it.