Thinking about the “you always start things and then quit them” knock against so many, including, yes, me.

This is a good thing. Or can be.

Being insatiably curious is GOOD. Trying new things is GOOD. Moving on, taking those bits of knowledge and experience with you: GOOD. (I feel a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote coming on. Memorization can be GOOD, too.)

“If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges and is not installed in an office one year afterwards in the cities of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A steady lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast of his day and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.”

• Self-Reliance, I think. Pretty sure. Gotta be.
  

And you pick up all sorts of things from the strangest places. At the time, it may seem like a waste. A waste of time. A waste of energy. “How will my year-long obsession with breeding Labrador Retrievers ever be useful??” Somehow, it is.

You never know what pieces will fit together.

Learn and learn and learn. All you want. All you can. And inevitably you will also be finding your way somewhere. Even when it doesn’t feel like it. Even when it seems inconceivable that any of it, let alone all of it, has any purpose of connection at all.

There are indeed lazy, uncurious loafers who bounce from chance to chance, bored with the world, but that is the opposite of the person whose interest is piqued, pours herself into something, and then, at some point, finds herself satiated. Or simply discovers that it’s a bad fit.

This criticism should be more ridiculous on its face. It’s like criticizing someone for trying on clothes.

Go in. Experiment. Be self-reflective, work hard, and keep your eyes open. Take an aerial view as much as possible, and when you find something you like, dig and dig and dig. Don’t move on unless it’s really time. And take as much with you as you can. Don’t quit one thing to do another, necessarily. Choose wisely with your time and attention. But never think learning is a bad thing. Don’t let the idiots repeat stupid shit without questioning it like it’s some sacred, ancient, “it is known” knowledge.

And this criticism is top-level stupid shit.