I’ve had a trainee during my shift at the radio station off on & for the past couple of months, and today was his last training. I feel like I’m probably a terrible trainer, because I’ve been doing it so long that it’s all kind of second nature for me. But it’s good to be forced to bring it back to the foreground and think it through now & then.
In any case, as I told him near the end of the afternoon, it’s not really about doing everything perfectly, but rather about staying calm when you inevitably screw something up, and being able to recover comparatively gracefully. There you go: a life lesson that’s worth at least a semester’s worth of Duke tuition.
After dinner we watched Adaptation, which I had never seen. It was about like I figured it would be, I guess, only somehow I had forgotten that (a) it starred Nic Cage and (b) he played twins. The makeup was truly appalling – I hope someone was nominated for an Oscar for Nic’s hairpieces, and whatever kind of crazy dental appliance Chris Cooper had going on.
M has all kind of family things happening right now, which are awful & a drag. As is the news, daily. I hope someone makes a top-20 list of good things that happened in 2014, because I could use some perspective.