We must be quarantined
The dread illness has struck the house. Two of the three mini-humans and The Wife. Vomiting, chills, diarrhea, the general ick. I dropped out of work early to come home to lead the Sick Bay, being the nice guy that I am. Of course, I pondered the decision long and hard: Do I stay at work, and help coordinate the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper's coverage for the latest Rich Guy Who Died, and not get sick; or do I go home and risk contracting the dread illness myself? Being bored with local celebrity deaths (five in the last two months), I decided to take my chances with the D.I. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I have this generalized feeling that something big and wonderful is ... just out of reach. Can't really explain that feeling. I've made reference before to some interesting new things we're trying around here, things that would be pretty momentous in other households but are just New Things to Try here. Things like spending A Lot of Money on a Dog, with some thought that it might generate return on investment. Things like putting the house on the market (no takers yet). Things like taking on the Freelance Gig, which involves being a system consultant and Web-page designer despite the fact that as of the time I took the Gig, three weeks ago, I knew little more about a system than the average really competent end-user and had only designed one web page (this one, based largely on a template).

Oddly, all of a sudden, I've learned quite a bit about computers, and have now designed another web page, and it looks pretty good (and no, you can't see it yet) using nothing but raw HTML. It's really very cool, the way I learn; kind of like being at school, except it's a hell of a lot less expensive and I learn in the way I learn best, which is by sitting down and doing it and really f---ing it up and then figuring out where I f---ed it up and fixing it. Then, when I really get stumped, I refer to the book. Or, in a real pinch, Heaven forbid, I'll ask somebody.

The good thing about being able to learn this way -- and I am aware that not everybody does -- is that I'm bound by few conventions and have nobody to impress but myself, and, occasionally, somebody who knows less than I do. The bad thing is I never become really, really good at anything. I learn enough to be competent (or slightly better than competent, in a few cases) but no skill ever really gets developed. For instance, I'll soon be a pretty good Web designer, for a newspaper guy. I'm a pretty good newspaper page designer, as sports writers go. I was a pretty good sports writer, for a young kid. I'm never really really good at something. I'm just pretty good at [x], considering that [x] is not my main skill.

That presumes I even know what my main skill is.