Self Evaluation

With the heat wave over I was able to take a real walk yesterday, over four miles. I went shopping. Today I should go to the Botanical Garden. The fly in the ointment is getting ready for Falcon Ridge and doing laundry. I’m having a lot of anxiety over the festival this year. It’s happened before but this year there are so many changes and uncertainty. I’m not going to discover anyone new this year, I know almost all the performers. My Murphy must have scheduled the workshops as they all seem to include people I want to see and people I don’t. Murphy gets his hand into everything.

I was disappointed to find that I could not watch the Met game. TBS is no longer included in my package. Tonight, is ESPN. Let’s see if I can watch that. I can’t. I’m gonna cry. I was wrong. There was just a log in issue. Yay! Even though I couldn’t watch last night I could listen, and I did. My Mets defeated the forces of Sauron, aka The Yankees, and made the world safe for democracy. My Mets win or lose but it’s more fun when they win. They’ve done more of that this year than of late. This century the Mets have had just two 90 win and one 95 win seasons. For comparison, the Yankees have had 15 90-win, 13 95-win, and six 100-win seasons; not that I’m competitive or anything.

I just got some good news. I have a job interview at a high school in Brooklyn on Wednesday. It would be teaching pre-calculus and above! It’s right near Pete’s Candy Store. I get the job and that becomes my hangout. It’s not the easiest place to get to. Once I save enough money I’d move to Brooklyn. I’d like to do that anyway. I’d be much closer to my friends. Wish me luck. Maybe I can start a letter writing campaign. Will all of My Gentle Readers write them and demand that I be hired? What kills me is that I know I am a great teacher, and my students would learn. I like self-deprecatory humor, so people sometimes think I have low self-esteem. My problem is tempering my high self-esteem with objectivity. I suspect that I’m not really better looking than Chris Hemsworth; I might be just the second most attractive male Avenger.

All kidding aside self-evaluation is one of the most difficult things to do. The Dunning-Kruger effect is always ready to rear its ugly head. It is so easy to fool yourself, that’s why I look for empirical evidence and the opinions of others when judging my abilities. People laugh when I tell jokes, so I know that I’m funny. Despite my protestations that I’m an idiot, everyone thinks I’m intelligent. I do test well and understand things quickly. I can’t sing worth a brass farthing. I have a good enough ear to tell that but I’m not as bad as I used to think I was. The problem with singing is that you don’t hear bad singers as often as good ones. I’m sure there are many things like that. Someone in one of my baseball groups said that people depend on analytics because they don’t have faith in their judgment. He’s right, I don’t. I don’t have faith in his judgment either. The fact that he disdains statistical confirmation of his judgment makes me have more faith in mine than his. He has no correction mechanism.

You know what else I’m good at? Hosting a radio show. I have next week’s show all laid out and scripted. The songs are even more interconnected than usual. Only after I was scripting it did I notice that one song is a cover of an artist I played earlier in the show. I rearranged the order so it would directly follow it. Do other people appreciate that or is it just me?

My tummy is telling me this entry is finished. Bacon on naan sounds delicious.