![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So here it is, the end of the month...
Jan. 30th, 2016 09:17 pmI am not working at 100% efficiency, I know that. One could argue that I'm wasting time, doing things like participating in LJ Idol instead of performing useful, bill-paying work (especially when there is so much of it currently piled on my plate), but in the end—who knows?—perhaps it will be stuff like LJ Idol that family members will remember me by.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to be morose. The fact is, I'm planning to stick around for quite a long time, but that does not mean I should fail to notice the fleeting nature of life. It "fleets" for you as quickly as it does for me, after all. And although it may take a year or twenty for the cancer to kill me, something completely different may intervene before than happens—I may get hit by the proverbial truck when I venture out onto the street tomorrow.
That said, technically, choosing to do one thing over another because there may be greater payoff in terms of being remembered doesn't quite sound the proper Stoic notes, if I interpret my Aurelius correctly. In fact, Woody Allen banged (among other things) the Stoic drum loudly when he declared that instead of attaining immortality through his body of cinematic work, he preferred to attain immortality through not dying.
Along those lines, it was not until fairly recently that I learned of the key role Felix Mendelssohn played in "rehabilitating" a certain obscure eighteenth-century composer by the name of Johann Sebastian Bach. In all likelihood, were it not for Felix, few today would be aware of Bach at all, which frankly blows my mind. Indeed, I'll bet that even despite the general recognition that the names of Mendelssohn and Bach enjoy today, there are likely many people out there—educated people—for whom these names mean nada. (I am reminded of the year Amadeus won Oscars, and learning that my boss—a college graduate in engineering with a bunch of post-graduate hours, if memory serves—had no idea who this fellow Mozart might be. That said, for my part, before I saw the movie, the name Salieri meant nothing to me, either. I like to think there is a difference, here, but I digress...)
For the past couple of weeks, I have allowed "the best to be the enemy of the good" as far as writing a simple introduction in Spanish. Well, today, I "wasted" a bit more time and took 20 minutes to put together a fairly rudimentary introduction that it pained me to send because I know that, given enough time, I could do a much better job. The only problem with that approach is that it truly represents wasted time. Paraphrasing Patton, "Mediocre progress made now is better than perfect progress never attempted."
Tomorrow is going to be one hum-dinger of a day, so I better go get ready for it. That would include a robust session of rack drill.
Cheers...
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to be morose. The fact is, I'm planning to stick around for quite a long time, but that does not mean I should fail to notice the fleeting nature of life. It "fleets" for you as quickly as it does for me, after all. And although it may take a year or twenty for the cancer to kill me, something completely different may intervene before than happens—I may get hit by the proverbial truck when I venture out onto the street tomorrow.
That said, technically, choosing to do one thing over another because there may be greater payoff in terms of being remembered doesn't quite sound the proper Stoic notes, if I interpret my Aurelius correctly. In fact, Woody Allen banged (among other things) the Stoic drum loudly when he declared that instead of attaining immortality through his body of cinematic work, he preferred to attain immortality through not dying.
Along those lines, it was not until fairly recently that I learned of the key role Felix Mendelssohn played in "rehabilitating" a certain obscure eighteenth-century composer by the name of Johann Sebastian Bach. In all likelihood, were it not for Felix, few today would be aware of Bach at all, which frankly blows my mind. Indeed, I'll bet that even despite the general recognition that the names of Mendelssohn and Bach enjoy today, there are likely many people out there—educated people—for whom these names mean nada. (I am reminded of the year Amadeus won Oscars, and learning that my boss—a college graduate in engineering with a bunch of post-graduate hours, if memory serves—had no idea who this fellow Mozart might be. That said, for my part, before I saw the movie, the name Salieri meant nothing to me, either. I like to think there is a difference, here, but I digress...)
For the past couple of weeks, I have allowed "the best to be the enemy of the good" as far as writing a simple introduction in Spanish. Well, today, I "wasted" a bit more time and took 20 minutes to put together a fairly rudimentary introduction that it pained me to send because I know that, given enough time, I could do a much better job. The only problem with that approach is that it truly represents wasted time. Paraphrasing Patton, "Mediocre progress made now is better than perfect progress never attempted."
Tomorrow is going to be one hum-dinger of a day, so I better go get ready for it. That would include a robust session of rack drill.
Cheers...
