A Portrait of the Artists?

Many, many parents think their kids are geniuses. Some of them are right, some of them are dead-wrong and some of them work hard to deceive themselves that Einstein eats Cinnamon Toast Crunch at their breakfast table: "I know he fails everything, but I believe this happens because he is not challenged enough. So he needs to be in all the top classes, even though he has a test average of 6."

The bottom line is, we parents all want our kids to succeed and we tend to project possible glorious futures for them. I have my own opinions about my own kids, but I am not going to write a proud dad piece here. But I do think it is interesting that, for the first time with both of them, I saw real evidence that they might carry on in their dad's creative footsteps. (Let's face it -- I can't completely avoid the proud dad thing, here [puts thumbs behind suspenders; bounces up and down on toes].)

That Kind of Time

Click pic for source

Okay, so we might as well stick with the "time" theme this week. You know what I am sick of? People who say "Man, I wish I had that kind of time on my hands" to people who do things like, oh, I don't know -- maintain blogs, carve pumpkins, make art or pursue anything outside of the mundane chores both required by everyday life and created in order to give its drudgery an illusion of purpose.

These gloriously busy, condescendingly grown-up people are usually the same ones who love to brag about never being able to sit still. "Oh, I am not a sit-around kind of person. I have to be doing something." So, I guess I am supposed to clap. Bravo(a). You don't like to sit around. You're in the fray. A suburban warrior. Woot.

With the proper accolades graciously and sincerely distributed, I would now like to point out two things about myself: