You can't be good at everything

It's OK to suck at life sometimes

"Backburner Theory" comes from an essay by David Sedaris. He probably wouldn't endorse the name "Backburner Theory" or its application as a life framework (or anything I have to say, really), but I think about it all the time.

Pat was driving, and as we passed the turnoff for a shopping center, she invited us to picture a four burner stove.
"Gas or electric?" Hugh asked, and she said that it didn't matter.
This was not a real stove, but a symbolic one, used to prove a point at a management seminar she'd once attended. "One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work." The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful, you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful, you have to cut off two.
–David Sedaris, Laugh Kookaburra

Quoth the burners, you can't be good at everything.

Your favorite novelist might have skipped a few meals and unskipped a few cigarettes during the creation of her last b…