Isn't it great to know, really know, that the asterisks in the title are for space, and not modesty?

Today is the day that grades came out. Along with our grades, we sometimes have the opportunity to get some personal feedback from professors. Something that says, when you get right down to it  "I know you worked hard in this class, so don't feel bad about the exam;" or, otherwise, and I've gotten this one "I know you didn't work hard in class, so I don't know how you did so well on the exam."

 Often, the comments deal with writing. 

 Another law student said to me a bit ago, "I'm gonna chew on the next motherfucker to compliment my writing." Actually, that's not what she said - that's how I would have said what she said.

Obviously, a good writer expresses that sentiment far more gracefully than I do. But I like it more the way I put it. It is my goal to someday, somehow, fiind a way to slip the phrase "perfidious motherfucker" into a piece of legal writing. I WILL find a way. 

But I digress.

I know what she meant by that. Being a law student, and not being a writer, if that is what you wanted to be - has got to grind at you. Especially if you're good at it. Being a law student is so very almost like being a writer - in the way that running on a treadmill is like being a long-distance runner. In the way that chewing chocolate gum is like having dessert.

Nobody buys chocolate gum, by the way. It tastes like chocolate. You're chewing. You're smelling chocolate - but you wind up hungrier and less satisfied than when you started. It's worse than unsatisfying, it's desatisfying. 

So I feel for my law student/good writer classmate. Law school - and working, so far, it is almost exactly like writing. It looks like writing.  You're doing all the things that you would do, if you were a writer. You're reading and thinking and typing and editing and talking to people about the things you're reading and thinking and typing and editing - but that's not it. 

It is so hard to be good at something, know you are good at it, and not be able to do it, for real. 

In that, my law-school good writing classmate has a lot of companions. Because of this job market. I bet that there are probably less than 3,000 entry level legal jobs this year - and it's a generous estimate. This may, 40,000 people will graduate from law school. There are a lot of very, very bright students at my school - who want to be lawyers, and would be good lawyers, probably - who will not be lawyers. Not for a long time, likely. And, because of the way this whole thing works - they (we) will never catch up to where we could have been.

You can't go back and get a clerkship when the economy gets better.

I'll end my (goddamned frequent) digression on the shittiness of the economy. Can I write one post without talking about how I don't have a job? 

So, back to my writer friend. 

It is a very difficult thing to be very good at something you don't have the opportunity to do. 

I have another friend. He's in another painful situation. He is an amazing, amazing, amazing musician. He went from prodigy to virtuoso. There's only one problem: he doesn't like it. He absolutely doesn't care if he ever performs again, and would truly prefer not to. He's a natural talent; people would kill for it, and he would rather be, say, taller. (I'm not sure, actually, what he'd want instead.) This - is also a shitty position to be in.

Being very good at something - that you don't want - feels like crap. You can see other people struggle at something that comes to you naturally. You feel guilty; you feel like a fraud; people feel like they have the right to tell you that you're a "waste."

 Finally, to me. 

I am not very, very good at anything, really. I have the odd selection of talents - I am double jointed in the elbows and shoulders, for example. I can use the word "ecumenical" in a joke. I can write the word "motherfucker" and people will still call me sweet. I'm a half-decent pool player and a passable comedian.  None of these, however, are groundbreaking talents of any kind.

I do have a lot of things, however, that I am VERY bad at, and I still enjoy doing VERY much. I have so much fun at these things that I openly, and shamelessly, fail at. Kickboxing, bowling - writing a blog post that has a point, and contains the word "motherfucker" fewer than three times - so many things. 

So, a philosophical question arises: given that being very, very good at something that you cannot do often makes one miserable - and being very, very good at something you don't care about doesn't seem to be much better - is it better to be bad at something that you enjoy?