Natural Gifts Lead to Frustration

Every human is gifted in unique ways. Some people have artistic gifts, others have technical gifts. Some have public gifts, some have private gifts. Some are writers, some are mathematicians, some are thinkers, some are doers.

Gifts are different than arts. Arts can benefit from natural talent, but arts can also be learned and practiced. Indeed, arts can be perfected through learning and practice. I teach the art of rhetoric for the U.S. government. Although some people are dynamic speakers naturally, I think that virtually anyone can become an engaging speaking through instruction and practice. That is my professional opinion.

Gifts are different. Gifts apply not to specific skills or actions, but to frameworks. Anyone can study math, but unless they have a natural gifting--a framework that organizes information mathematically--they can never become the best mathematicians. Anyone can study writing, but even with perfect grammar, only those gifted with a stylistic framework can become the best writers.

Gifts are my greatest frustration. I am not stupid. I am a top-performing student in one of the top ten political philosophy schools on earth. When my first case study was published by the Project on National Security Reform, my highest degree was a high school diploma. I'm a writer, too. I've been employed full-time as a writer since my college graduation over four years ago. I'm not a terrible manager, either. I am not stupid.

Nevertheless, I do not possess the framework to give Stratics the technical support that it needs. In 1995, I created my first site on GeoCities and started practicing HTML. I have continued to practice HTML since this time. From its advent in 1996, I have also studied and practiced CSS. Yet, to this very day, I have to reference the simplest HTML and CSS tags. W3Schools is on my bookmark bar. I have also attempted to learn SQL and JavaScript--by all accounts, some of the simplest and most useful skills for a website director. The information does not stick. I cannot make it stick. No amount of practice or effort has improved my capacity to internalize this data. I do not have this gifting. I lack the framework.

I want Stratics to succeed. I've been a user since 1999. It would crush me to see Stratics fail as a result of my lack of capacity. Since my promotion to director, my life's greatest fear has not been the end of my career, or marriage, or anything else related to my personal life. My weightiest concern has been that I will let Stratics down--the staff and the community.

Note I receive plenty of pats on the back. This is not a request for encouragement. Rather, the honest truth is that Stratics needs better support if it is going to remain afloat. I hope to one day be replaced by someone who shares my care for this vision, but who has giftings that are more appropriate to this role.