Are You Multi-Talented? Knock It Off.

When I'm writing and feeling like a fool who can't write (not a recipe for success) in order to get out of that mindset and write something half decent sometimes I'll imagine I'm a good writer. Then, having assumed this persona, I set forth to place words where they should go. It's a trick I use, that works to a certain extent, but I don't imagine myself to be a good writer deep down. I do one or two other things kind of well but I never think of myself as an All-Star: someone with many talents – an expert in many fields.

Do you do more than one thing consistently well? Nasty person. Don't you know never to be good at more than one thing? Because there are pigeonholes, you know. And people like 'em.

Pigeonholes make life nice and tidy. And there's nothing worse than a pigeon to whom you assign a hole who thinks they should have more than one. It's greedy and defeats the whole purpose of world order and clarity.

Besides, with the unemployment rate as high as it is, by doing many things aren't you hogging the work? Why would you want to do that, eh? Don't you think you should be letting other people practice at being good at what they do?

Oh sure, you may think you're a polymath, a true Renaissance person – a great thinker like Leonardo (da Vinci, not DiCaprio). Just who was this Leon Battista Alberti guy, who said A man can do all things if he will? No one talks about him anymore, nor is he on anyone's cocktail party list that I know of.

So you folks out there who may be a multi-talented All-Star, dumb it down for the rest of us will you?