January 16 – Lin-Manuel Miranda gets an alternate path to a coveted award

I didn’t used to know about hard work positively correlating with success, and my head and its contained narcissism only saw one way out of my noteworthless path. I would dream about running into the right sequence of people, increasingly influential and supportive, where I would be on and charming enough to convince them of my foolish intelligence I was as yet shielding from the world. Eventually, one of them would find a way to award me with that coveted MacArthur genius grant, and I would take my $625,000 and invest it wholly in my potential. I would, of course, fail in spectacular fashion, but none of us could foresee that at the time. Someone, maybe a different Fellow, would make a documentary about me and the detrimental effect of my windfall. God, I apologize, I didn’t mean to ramble on like this. I’m being such a Lin-Manuel Carrie right now. Someone read me my Miranda rights so I’ll shut the flip up!