Funny, I wrote something about the Zero Story that we (the drudgey trodden-upon types) also tell ourselves in less, er, heroic fashion to rationalize NOT putting ourselves in a (tiring) hero narrative. Might post something about that later. (Frank, did you see anything in that exchange that was pertinent to your own points in HS? Felt kind of like quasi-aimless riffing to me, but it was fun to write and it's interesting to think that sometimes we extract ourselves from the Hero Story that might be more "truthful" in a given interest than the Zero Story [can't right now, too busy; what difference can I really make, anyway] we claim to be sorta stuck in -- i.e., it's not that hard to continually challenge yourself but, as Mike says, it can be unbearable in the day-to-day sense. I had a convo with my friend Ian on the phone the other day about lazy classical music critics in NYT, and said it's funny that cultural/art criticism seems to be one place where "this is really hard" is a kind of justifiable defense on occasion. "Writing about music is really hard, so here's this thought piece that dances around the subject instead." Ian's retort: "you guys, seriously, heart surgery is really hard sometimes!!")