When I was 15 -Vonnegut

As a means of introduction, I am sharing a popular anecdote from Kurt Vonnegut that is a source of motivation for this year’s commitment to daily drawing. And so it goes…

“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked me those kinds of ‘getting to know you’ questions you ask young people: do you play sports? What is your favorite subject?'”

“And I told him, no I don’t play sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.”

“And then he said WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, Oh no, but I am no good at ANY of them.”

“And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘I don’t think you have to be good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

“And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘Win’ at them.”