Skills, Talents and Lion Taming

Well, I still don't fully understand blogger stats because apparently today started at 8pm last night. Still fun to see where people are from. (Unless its all just weird ad things which is totally possible but either way just let me have my fun). Yesterday America beat Canada. That hasn't happened yet so that was kind of neat.

Anyways, I just read my sister's latest blog post and it was pretty insightful. She is right, there is a 100% difference between skill and talent. Skills are learned and developed over years of practice. Talent is for those assholes who can pick something up once and are suddenly amazing. Talented people are not always assholes I suppose, however not being one of them I think I am entitled to a tiny bit of jealousy.

I have skills, sure. I mean, no one can organize a binder quite like me. But how nice would it be to be a naturally talented person? To just wake up one day and say, "Well today, I think I will take up Lion Taming." and just instantly be amazing at it. That would be an impressive and useful skill I think. Not that I really fully approve of the circus, but we are getting off topic - which is obviously totally unlike me.

I really wonder how many of the Olympians are skilled and how many are just talented. I assume they are all a combination of the two. If you have the talent but not the commitment to improve the skills you'll go nowhere, and if you have no talent even though you practice really hard then that is pretty useless also.

The best thing about talent, is that it is usually something useless. Like people who can spin basketballs on their fingers, but aren't 12 feet tall so they will never joining the Harlem globe trotters and then that's a perfect example of a wasted talent. Mostly. Usually a waste of something would mean that it was not useless in the first place, but you can't expect me to be too clever in the morning otherwise this relationship will never work. What relationship, we're not in one? Well I beg to differ.

I don't think I have a useless talent. Which makes me sad. I should be the captain of all things useless. Unless Post-it art is a useless talent. I would classify that as a skill because its 100% useful and I have to actually work at it.You think hippos draw their own stabbing knives? No. They do not. 

I seem to have to work at everything I do, no matter how useless it is. For example, I spent a good portion of my childhood training my facial muscles to make the Elvis snarly-lip thing because my dad could do it and that seemed unfair. Or how I am pretty good at identifying miscellaneous actors in weird random roles and placing them in whatever movie they were in that I knew them from, but that involves a lot of watching movies and television which can be a lot of work when they suck.

So, what kind of talents do you have? Only of the useless variety, I really don't care if you can do a tripple-hoopity-skip-fancy-pants dive from twenty stories in the Olympics. I care more if you can belly flop from any height without it hurting, or if you can name all of the characters from every Disney movie ever - including their most well known song. The most useless talent will win a prize. It will be something awesome in the form of a drawing which we all know you want super badly. So leave me a comment with your useless talents. I think I turned off the robot protector because they are evil. I will leave it off until I start to get too many spam things. Take advantage now real humans! Comment away!!

Also, because I made a post last night without a drawing, I will give you one with no reading required shortly. But that's probably more dangerous then if it had context.

Skills, Talents and Lion Taming

Well, I still don't fully understand blogger stats because apparently today started at 8pm last night. Still fun to see where people are from. (Unless its all just weird ad things which is totally possible but either way just let me have my fun). Yesterday America beat Canada. That hasn't happened yet so that was kind of neat.

Anyways, I just read my sister's latest blog post and it was pretty insightful. She is right, there is a 100% difference between skill and talent. Skills are learned and developed over years of practice. Talent is for those assholes who can pick something up once and are suddenly amazing. Talented people are not always assholes I suppose, however not being one of them I think I am entitled to a tiny bit of jealousy.

I have skills, sure. I mean, no one can organize a binder quite like me. But how nice would it be to be a naturally talented person? To just wake up one day and say, "Well today, I think I will take up Lion Taming." and just instantly be amazing at it. That would be an impressive and useful skill I think. Not that I really fully approve of the circus, but we are getting off topic - which is obviously totally unlike me.

I really wonder how many of the Olympians are skilled and how many are just talented. I assume they are all a combination of the two. If you have the talent but not the commitment to improve the skills you'll go nowhere, and if you have no talent even though you practice really hard then that is pretty useless also.

The best thing about talent, is that it is usually something useless. Like people who can spin basketballs on their fingers, but aren't 12 feet tall so they will never joining the Harlem globe trotters and then that's a perfect example of a wasted talent. Mostly. Usually a waste of something would mean that it was not useless in the first place, but you can't expect me to be too clever in the morning otherwise this relationship will never work. What relationship, we're not in one? Well I beg to differ.

I don't think I have a useless talent. Which makes me sad. I should be the captain of all things useless. Unless Post-it art is a useless talent. I would classify that as a skill because its 100% useful and I have to actually work at it.You think hippos draw their own stabbing knives? No. They do not. 

I seem to have to work at everything I do, no matter how useless it is. For example, I spent a good portion of my childhood training my facial muscles to make the Elvis snarly-lip thing because my dad could do it and that seemed unfair. Or how I am pretty good at identifying miscellaneous actors in weird random roles and placing them in whatever movie they were in that I knew them from, but that involves a lot of watching movies and television which can be a lot of work when they suck.

So, what kind of talents do you have? Only of the useless variety, I really don't care if you can do a tripple-hoopity-skip-fancy-pants dive from twenty stories in the Olympics. I care more if you can belly flop from any height without it hurting, or if you can name all of the characters from every Disney movie ever - including their most well known song. The most useless talent will win a prize. It will be something awesome in the form of a drawing which we all know you want super badly. So leave me a comment with your useless talents. I think I turned off the robot protector because they are evil. I will leave it off until I start to get too many spam things. Take advantage now real humans! Comment away!!

Also, because I made a post last night without a drawing, I will give you one with no reading required shortly. But that's probably more dangerous then if it had context.

Newspaper Lions

Surprise! I am bored again. Big shocker I am sure of it.

I just wanted to take a moment to say a big thank you to the nice old man who works for the Metro newspaper. I get off the bus and he has been there every day for a while now (sometimes it changes people) and he hands me my free paper. Now, on days when the bus parks too far or is closer to the box I tend to just get them there but he always looks so sad and disappointed I try to see him.

I feel bad for this elderly man. He is so friendly and smiles at everyone but most people don't even make eye contact with him. What has the world come to if you can't even be bothered to look someone in the eyes and say "no thanks" if you don't want a free newspaper.

Today when he gave me my paper he said "don't ever stop smiling" to me and it probably was the highlight of my day. I guess it is because I am a small-town girl from one of the last places believing in common decency, but I just think its nice to be nice. At least to strangers just trying to do their jobs. It truly seems like a crappy job.

So, downtown please try to be nice to the paper people. They mean no harm and usually are just cold and bored so just give them a polite nod if you can possibly can spare the energy. It's not like its a lion trying to eat you, it is a person trying to give you a newspaper. Calm down.

Side note- as great as this old man is I really miss the old one. I had the same paper guy for probably close to a year and he was so friendly and I think he knew what bus I was on because he would see it coming and walk closer to it to give me my paper. One day they were giving away samples of special K bars and he gave me a full box. He was the greatest. But the new guy is also grand.

Newspaper Lions

Surprise! I am bored again. Big shocker I am sure of it.

I just wanted to take a moment to say a big thank you to the nice old man who works for the Metro newspaper. I get off the bus and he has been there every day for a while now (sometimes it changes people) and he hands me my free paper. Now, on days when the bus parks too far or is closer to the box I tend to just get them there but he always looks so sad and disappointed I try to see him.

I feel bad for this elderly man. He is so friendly and smiles at everyone but most people don't even make eye contact with him. What has the world come to if you can't even be bothered to look someone in the eyes and say "no thanks" if you don't want a free newspaper.

Today when he gave me my paper he said "don't ever stop smiling" to me and it probably was the highlight of my day. I guess it is because I am a small-town girl from one of the last places believing in common decency, but I just think its nice to be nice. At least to strangers just trying to do their jobs. It truly seems like a crappy job.

So, downtown please try to be nice to the paper people. They mean no harm and usually are just cold and bored so just give them a polite nod if you can possibly can spare the energy. It's not like its a lion trying to eat you, it is a person trying to give you a newspaper. Calm down.

Side note- as great as this old man is I really miss the old one. I had the same paper guy for probably close to a year and he was so friendly and I think he knew what bus I was on because he would see it coming and walk closer to it to give me my paper. One day they were giving away samples of special K bars and he gave me a full box. He was the greatest. But the new guy is also grand.