I continue continuingly to feel like I need a nap: when I lie down, I close my eyes and at once feel near to sleep–but rarely sleep. Although, I seem now always to get six hours or more at night. Can’t figure it out. But It makes it hard for me to concentrate, or want to do anything like write a daily entry here, which I’m forcing myself to do to keep myself from falling entirely to sloth.
I’m not sleepy when on the tennis court. This morning, I played three sets of doubles (2 wins). I was reasonably energetic, and running better, albeit nowhere near as well as I feel I ought to. When I got home, I didn’t start limping, as I generally do after tennis. So my leg may be getting better. I quickly got sleepy, though.
Okay, to provide slightly less trivial content to this, back to the maximuteur, specifically to the what makes a failed maximuteur.
1. Not knowing enough, including the fact that one doesn’t know enough. The result for the failed verosopher is a faulty premise, for the failed artist, lack of originality.
2. Illogic that will doom even a maximuteur with a valid premise or full understanding of an art.
3. Lack of talent for self-criticism.
4. Lack of marketing skills.
I think 1. may well apply to me as a theoretical psychologist, but none of the others–at least to any significant degree. I’ve done almost nothing to market my theory, but I’ve published enough to make it available, and had a weird enough life, enough of it documented, to eventually get someone to pay attention to it. I consider it very likely invalid, but almost certainly of value.
I don’t think any of the reasons for failure apply to me as a poet. Again, my marketing attempts have not been very good, but my poetry has been published and a few times discussed by others. I can’t believe that I won’t get so much as a footnote in literary histories of my time.