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Meatballs

Imperfect as I am, I regularly fail at tasks. Some I just moved on from; my ability to shoot a basketball was never good in any way and I just never felt the pay-off of trying to improve.

I do love to cook and I used to attempted meatballs regularly. I am not a fan of meatballs on pasta but do enjoy a good meatball sandwich, Swedish meatballs, etc.

I had a run in the 90's and 00's of never being able to make meatballs; inevitably they fell apart and I ended up with a meat sauce. There are reasons why my technique was faulty but those were busy years for me and I never invested the time in improving, just decided that with all my other recipes I could do without.

This past year I saw a recipe that was appealing for Italian meatballs and I decided to get back up on that horse. They came out really well. I've done Swedish meatballs since then and this morning assembled some Teriyaki meatballs.

The specifics (use a crockpot with a good sauce and let them cook slowly and gently) that allowed me to get back up on that horse are probably not that relevant. My subconscious doesn't communicate directly with me and so I have learned to observe my behavior and try to deduce what is going on.

I seem to keep track of failures that I think I can redeem. I don't do this intentionally but it shows up in many aspects of my life. I am perfectly willing to let decades go by but somewhere there is a log of mishaps in my mind and I review it regularly without meaning to.

I think I have been pretty good about letting a lot of things go as I did with shooting a basketball. An aging body certainly makes it clear that I will never run in a marathon. (I ran in 20K races in my 20's, so this is not out of left field.) Physical stuff is pretty obvious and delusional as I am in many areas, I'm pretty clear about my physical limitations.

It's not just about redeeming failures though. There are things I didn't fail at but had given up on. I stopped touring in my 20's. Back in university I toured with our Concert Band, living out of a suitcase for out-of-town gigs. I never thought I would do that again, and yet I sang in an ensemble at Carnegie Hall last month. When that opportunity came up it really clicked that I had missed touring.

So I watch myself and observe and try to identify what I still hold on to as desired repeated opportunities. I have been humbled enough in a good way to know that I can not rule out things that I did not think would work out. I'm cooking meatballs again.

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