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The ball has dropped, in so many ways. I assume you've accomplished half your goals for the year already now that we're a full 48 hours in. 

"Proud Generalist" is something I might stencil on a business card, but I've thought a lot lately about how to convey general excellence and not haphazard drifting. And a question of equal importance: who's making that judgment? Me? The person reading / listening / watching the thing I helped create? Editors at publications I've pitched? The person hiring me for the next job? 

I don't know, but I'll start with me.

My interests span a lot of areas -- I just spent three months of my "free" time researching and interviewing and learning about a single tree. Not a species. One tree. Blame the goats.

I also wrote a couple pieces about runners and triathletes, and then earlier this week, I spent a half hour reading about the formality of peals. 

All of this leads me to a line that's stuck with me all month, from a future ghost story (with an eye-catching lead illustration). Smithsonian scientist Charles Doolittle Walcott "spent 15 field seasons at the shale, but he was so busy digging up fossils he didn’t have much time to decipher them."

I haven't read his biography, so maybe Walcott was a peerless field geologist and terrible at analysis. Maybe he derived more enjoyment from the outdoors. But I see someone engulfed in a tiny sliver of life to the detriment of any larger implications. 

If this year goes well, I'll have several major projects land, some after years of planning (late?) and none with a direct relation to my day job. I hope to survey what I've created in the past few years and be able to say that I've met my own standards for originality and exceptional work, both in process and products. And really, ideally, "I'd collaborate with Dustin" will soon serve as someone's answer to "What would you do with a billion dollars?"

As a reminder, you'll receive double newsletters in 2020, but the ones swooping to you mid-month will contain only one link. The 30 on the 15th -- apparently I've fallen into a tennis scoring system. Same for the first poem of the year for you, too.
 

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