Practice Makes Perfect

I possess but a few hobbies, most of which I've alluded to in this weblog. Two of these--photography and the guitar--are basically talent driven. Pretty much everyone wants some type of talent: something we are especially good at, something that makes us shine. I'm no different. I want to be a talented photographer and musician.

Talent, in order to blossom, needs to be properly nourished. Most of us wish it was naturally instilled and all we had to do was turn on the faucet and out came all sorts of nice, creative things. Well, the truth of the matter is it almost never works that way. Such giftedness is as rare as hen's teeth. Virtually everyone who is good at something became good by one simple method: practice.

Laziness is my primary obstacle. I want the skill, but not enough to travel the road between mediocrity and excellence. It seems I enjoy sitting right where I am, watching the traffic speed by. There are always other obstacles, too. Life is never so empty that we have large pockets of time free so that we can fill them with practice. To practice, we take away from something else. Work and the responsibilities of family life take up pretty much everything that sleep doesn't claim, so it would typically be family responsibilities that would suffer. This is also a very convenient excuse that I don't mind using to explain my mediocrity. Family first.

So it's never a very big surprise when I apply myself to one of these hobbies and notice that my skill level remains somewhere between fair and middling. There has always been a market for my skill set in certain areas, the "jack of all trades". The complete verse from which this is lifted says: "Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one." There is therefore supposed benefit in being skilled in several things instead of being exceptional in any one of them. Most times, I would agree. My passable skills at car and home repair have saved me a boatload of money, which for a poor fellow such as myself is no small benefit. Yet I still would like to excel at either photography or music (or both, if I had my way). Excelling at music would be more fun, but excelling at photography would be more practical. Such is my dilemma, and I spend many long, long hours not worrying about it.

There will be a day in the future when all the kids have moved away, the nest is empty, and I finally have that large pocket of time. I wonder whether I will even care about photography or music then.