It's time to 'fess up here. I don't think I've ever been really good at all that much in my lifetime. When I graduated with an art degree, I spent about a year buzzing around ignominy plying my trade making comics for an underground band, which lead to t-shirt designs and CD covers, and stuph like that. I don't think I made a red cent off of any of it. I also discovered if I was going to make it as an illustrator, I was likely going to have to spend many more years of working a day-job, spending another ten hours a day hustling for, and trying to deliver, work, and still not likely make a red cent off of it. Somewhere in that stretch, I bailed.
Yeah, I know, for a while, people probably thought I had a reasonably capable singing voice, and as an indie-rock frontman, I could probably offer up at least a modicum of somewhat entertaining theatricality. I even had the work ethic and tireless determination thing down in this line of work. But after ten years of that, especially towards my later twenties and into my thirties, even I had to look myself in the mirror and realize, in the end, I was just a stubby little ex-dork (with little emphasis on the 'ex' in that term) who by then had accumulated too much of a beer gut to ever be proclaimed, in anyone, understanding, a 'rock star.' I didn't bail, the vocation simply bailed on me. Or, more accurately, I failed.
After that, I guess, I took a swing at some sort of notion of writer / journalist, but I can't even claim much line of real talent or accomplishment on that of the game. Stephen King once said: "If you write, and you've sold something you wrote, and the money which you made selling what you wrote has paid one of your bills, I consider you talented." Under Stephen King's criteria, I am not talented.
The one thing, unfortunately (aside from spending my twenties getting drunk at least two or three nights a week) I ever showed any genuine aplomb at was devoting enormous chunks of my ever-atrophying brain to little more than sifting through the detritus of human information, and accumulating a veritable wealth of utterly useless knowledge. I was a conversation stimulator. A pundit / shit-stirrer / hobknobber extraordinaire. I could contribute to nearly any discussion about almost any topic you'd like to cover, at least for five to ten minutes. I frequently could even stand the old trope "Running an inch deep but a mile wide" on its ear some. I could run 100 wide...and maybe a foot and a half deep. I could be the backbone of your party or dinner conversation, as long as you kept the Irish whiskey under three glasses, otherwise I'd probably piss someone off.
I've been a smart guy. It's just been for the most useless of stuph. In no sort or discipline did I amass any sort of knowledge that might make me (gasp) marketable, let alone employable. As result, my rather blue-collar workplace and paycheck was almost inevitable, no matter if my nickname in many places was "Professor". Plenty of people used to say they'd choose me as their "lifeline" if they somehow got on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire". I just joked I was priming myself for one day making the longest run on "Jeopardy!" (I still haven't got on).
Still, even while all this shit I've managed to learn, and, quite implasibly, keep stored in my memory banks--like some 21st century version of Frank Herbert's race of Mentats in the Dune books--has never made me any scratch in the bank, some could argue it, at least, made me some sort of interesting human being, and a likely important contributor to the ongoing human discussion.
Then Google came along. And more importantly than just Google, people started walking around with SmartPhones all the time, which, at the touch of a button, could now access Google. Once, it at least took the discipline of making a point to sit down at your computer, and LOOK SHIT UP, and then remember it for the next time it became remotely pertinent to a conversation. Once the SmartPhone species of technology came along, the one flimsy barrier that separated me from any inordinate cavalcade of the myriad Drones of society now utterly ceased to exist.
So here you see me. A human artifact. Like the transistor radio, or the printing press, or the guys who used to cobble shoes by hand, I have been passed by. Human society needs me no more, because a fucking phone with some widgets and apps can do more than I spent years of my life honing my brain to be capable of.
I sure hope I can get on that short list of "Jeopardy!" applicants next year. Otherwise, I'm a fuckin' dinosaur.
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