I’m reviewing the situation…
I think I’d better think it out again!
— Fagin, from Oliver!
Befitting the subtitle of this publication — The Power of Story — there have been two literary references echoing in my head the past several weeks. The first is the above snippet from the musical version of Oliver Twist. My most recent post was three weeks ago. The experience of writing that piece was, frankly, brutal. And in the intervening time I have indeed been reviewing the situation and thinking it out again.
Unlike the first few editorial pieces in “My 2 Cents”, which were primarily based on personal experience and/or personal opinions, the last two were more ambitious attempts to analyze and respond to the calamities engulfing us. The misbegotten Iran war and the systematic hijacking of our country by a tiny minority of oligarchs and ideologues demanded response, I thought. Why did I think I was a logical candidate to tackle the response? Fair question.
I might well have fallen for the siren call of Claude AI. No, I didn’t ask Claude to write for me. But the governing instructions I put in place for this type of writing gave it the agency to provide voluminous research. I learned a lot but didn’t suddenly become qualified to analyze and express expert opinion on those complicated and nuanced topics. In my most recent work, I posed questions to Claude and asked for more details about things I’ve read as I tried to form a thesis. I eventually did that, but not before stumbling down numerous rabbit holes and burning through many hours.
The world of sports is known — and often mocked — for its myriad clichés. Some deserve ridicule, but some contain wisdom we would do well to heed. The one that applies here is the compliment sometimes paid a player who knows how to “play within him/herself.” Such a player relies on established skills, physical limits, and sound tactics. He doesn’t attempt things in a game that haven’t been mastered through extensive practice where patterns of success are established. She learns to stick to the game plan.
That’s more or less what I had in mind six months ago as I prepared my substack for the memoir project, investigating AI, and the occasional editorial to give “my two cents.” Coaches, whether for football or chess, encourage playing within oneself because not doing so results in physical tension, mental fatigue, and loss of confidence. This explains my “brutal” experience writing the most recent post. And my reluctance to continue. According to the IMGCA (the International Mental Game Coaching Association — yes, this is for real) even writing within oneself improves consistency and success over time.
This concept is ultimately about knowing who you are and who you aren’t; what you have and what you don’t. Which brings me to the second literary reference I’ve been mulling, and to the most fundamental limit of all.
The great science fiction writer, Ursula Le Guin, began a blog in her eighties. I learned of it only after many of the posts were gathered into a little book of essays titled No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters. I come back to it from time to time when I feel the need for an attitude adjustment about the slings and arrows of outrageous aging.
The book’s first and titular chapter relates her reactions to a survey she had received from Harvard for the 60th reunion of the 1951 graduating classes of Harvard and Radcliffe. She had pithy responses for many of the first 17 questions, but was stopped by the 18th: “In your spare time, what do you do? (check all that apply).” Followed by a list of 27 occupations, hobbies, and activities.
Rather than checking any boxes, she thought for quite a while. “The key words are spare time. What do they mean?” To a working person, she thinks, spare time is free time and valued as such. But to people in their seventies and eighties? “What do retired people have but “spare” time?” some might think. And if all the time you have is spare, and free, what do you make of it?
Then, she thinks, the opposite of spare time must surely be occupied time. As retired people will often tell you, we come to wonder how we ever used to find time to go to a job. Our time is fully occupied with dozens of different things — with living.
Le Guin concludes, “None of this is spare time. I can’t spare it. What is Harvard thinking of? I am going to be eighty-one next week. I have no time to spare.”
I concur. And I certainly have no time to spare writing things that others are better prepared, positioned, and proficient to do. Still, I have decided to keep Boomer With a View. I know there will be occasions when I will occupy my time with work on the memoir project. Or have an impulse to add my two cents to the conversation on some topic. At those times, you will receive something in your inbox which I hope you will find worthwhile. If so, maybe forward it to someone else who also might.