Just had that Hind on the phone. I did my listening thing while she relived a Very Important Exam In Doctoring with me because she’s worried she might have blown it. Hind, you haven’t. I know this because, as a medical school drop-out, I am an expert.
Then she asked me about my life and, as usual, I had little to report. “Yes, Hind, I am still a spectacular washout.”
So I told her again that two of my ‘Blog posts were going to be in this book.
“I know, Damian. You told me.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Ben was in the exam too. He’d been reading your ‘Blog because it referred to him at one point.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“He’s making a ten-part series of Bad Science for the BBC.”
“Blimey.”
What I need is to master the art of being proud of being an underachiever. “Yes, I once had Great Promise, but then I realised that it’s not all about striving for success. Now I am very spiritual. I’ve learned that I can take pleasure in my friends’ new families and celebrate their triumphs. The burden of ambition has just fallen away from me, leaving me feeling liberated. And spiritual.”
By ‘spiritual’, do you mean ‘bitter, lonely, envious, and unemployable’?
“Ooh, look, that makes an acronym—in, er, French.”
That Ben Goldacre’s bloody not 31.
A very poor paraphrase here that sums up my “underachieving” life: “Success is living life the way you want to.” There is as much joy and satisfaction in the daily as in the extraordinary, though usually not as much money. It all depends on what you want.
Don’t despair, Damian. Did you know Michael Rosen was a medical school drop-out too? And you’ve arguably outstripped him in writing Celebrity Bad Poetry……
Plus, how many doctors are as well or as widely known as Pootergeek?
And how many of them have had a Normblog profile (which is blogging royalty)
No contest, really…..