[TheForge] Re: doing research

[Mike Spencer]

I replied privately to Norm when he wrote:

> I think Mike Spencer has missed his calling.  He should have been 
> a writer.  Very well written, IMHO.

I didn't expect general interest but since there is, I'll post what I
wrote to him:

    I suspect, regretably, that I don't have the discipline to be a
    writer or anything else that is dignified with the name of A
    Calling.  Heaven forfend that I should take a mind to write a
    novel!  Five years later, somewhere in mid-Chapter 3, I'd be
    devising the widgit to lubricate the sharpener I made to sharpen
    the tools needed to make the chair to sit in to type the damn
    thing because this thing I'm sitting in annoys me.  Unfinished
    novel, dull chisels, inoperative sharpener but dang!  This is a
    really interesting lubricator widgit!

       A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an
       invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write
       a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort
       the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone,
       solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program
       a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die
       gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

                                 -- Robert Heinlein

I guess maybe Heinlein's notion is a "hopelessly romantic calling".
I still have a little trouble balancing accounts and so far, I'm
pleased to say, there has been no compulsory occasion to die,
gallantly or otherwise.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada 
                                 
mspencer@tallships.ca            
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/