ignoring damn near everything else

Does age bring wisdom?...

            Well, yes, I guess, if you are referring to two kids of memory: muscle and institutional.

            Each confers on its respective alte kakers a kind of confidence, comfort—even peace and serenity—that comes from years, years (and even more years) of experience.

            But wisdom? I say yes.

            Macolm Gladwell, the great, if youngish (60), New Yorker writer, once proposed that one became expert at something, regardless of the field, after 10,000 hours of doing it.

            He’s right.

            Having been a professional writer since 1967, when I started at the New York Daily News literally one week after graduating from CCNY, I have logged way more than 10,000 hours at typewriter and computer keyboards as a reporter, editor and author. I venture to say I am as virtuosic on these keyboards as my grammar school friend maestro Murray Perahia is at the grand piano when he plays Bach.

            Or put another way, the muscle memory that comes from a half-century of newspapering means I can write journalism about as easily as Derek Jeter used to field hot grounders.

            I also have logged “expert” hours as a photographer—on the commercial end, shooting everything from album covers to weddings; and on the artistic end, having my worked now in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Portland (Me.) Museum of Art.

            The wisdom that comes from all this experience is, I think, the wisdom of knowing to concentrate on one’s strengths while ignoring damn near everything else. To wit: I am not about to start writing novels. Had I wanted to do that I should have started decades ago, honing my skills. Writing a novel now would make about as much sense as my taking up ballet.

Doing what I do best makes me happy as hell.

            That’s wisdom.