Dilettantism

While running I often daydream. I know what most people would think: Of course you do, what else is there to occupy your mind? Actually, I wool-gather less than one might think. I am pretty serious and focused while training, so a lot of my mental energy is taken-up pushing myself to go faster. But I do daydream as well.

Today I was thinking about "dilettante". It is a word I really like, but often can't think of when I need it. While it is a word I like, it is not a phenomenon I like.

I once worked for a guy who was an uber-dilettante in many subjects and what a pain in the ass it was! He would get an idee fixe from some popular source like a best-seller or a magazine article and then it was off-to-the-races! It would take two weeks of lunchtime encounters, ten minute talks at random and so forth to compress a semester or two of theory and practice into usable form. Then and only then would he suddenly realize that it wasn't so cut-and-dry as he had been led to believe.

Ugh! And that was a boss, so it was kind of my job to educate and advise in situations like that. What is worse is when it is say, the husband of one of your wife's friends.