This morning I asked Word Raccoon to write a poem before reading anything much. I appealed to her intellect, which is often the antidote. To what, I’m not sure.
She wrote a decent draft. But honestly, she’d like to feel inspired. She reminded me that asking her to write a poem a day (or submit, or revise) is a lot. Like, remember that 26 for 26 list we created for 2026? We literally do not know where it is right now.
Art does not keep a schedule. It does not lift on its hind legs for a treat, she says with disdain.
It does sometimes respond, however, to structure, I remind her.
We read The Recovering Academic’s newsletter after that, and though I don’t watch The Pitt, (the subject of the newsletter) parts of the essay made me go quiet.
What stuck with me wasn’t even the part about work, exactly. It was this idea underneath it: that what you’re good at isn’t actually you.
He says “prodigious gifts” can become your whole identity, which he says isn’t a good idea, and Word Raccoon and I both paused mid-scroll.
Excuse me?
Because we like being good at things (we’re not thinking our gifts are prodigious, but we do know people who have those level gifts who we believe think that, too). We like the little gold stars, the “oh wow,” the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this is the thing that explains us.
And then along comes this sentence, gently suggesting that your talent might just be… a thing you do. Not who you are. Not your worth. Not your core self in a little outfit performing for snacks.
We didn’t love that.
We also couldn’t shake it.
I mean, we believe it about others, especially those who seem to judge their whole lives by what they didn’t do rather than what they did. That makes us both sad and a little defensive and we want to do a little cheer for them.
But us? We are more than our…
So anyway, WR and I just sat there for a minute, letting it be true-ish without trying to argue it down or turn it into a productivity tip. No moral of the story. No “and therefore we must…”
Just the uncomfortable possibility that the thing we’ve been polishing all this time isn’t the same thing as the person holding the cloth.
Word Raccoon would like it noted she is still excellent, regardless.
And, unrelated, I just fed her chocolate-covered almonds. But she wasn’t standing on her hind legs.
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