On a recent podcast, Joe Rogan "a legend with a caveat," putting him in the same category as Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson was a highly productive, highly influential writer with one helluva .
I recently re-watched Alex Gibney's Thompson biopic, "." I was having a bad day. Maybe it was more of a bad week. I needed a reminder that even the great ones slip sometimes. Sometimes, they slip far. They make mistakes. Things don't always go as planned. But if you keep showing up, things turn around.
So, I decided to keep showing up. I guess if it worked for Thompson, who finally quit this world when his body wouldn't let him show up anymore, and if it's working for Armstrong, who might have been a cheater but he was the best of the best at it for a long time (I bet if you took away all the cheating, he'd probably still be the best of the non-cheaters over that same period), it can work for a bad day. Or week. Or month. Or year. Or decade, it seems.
I think I like this concept of "legends with caveats." It brings to mind the image of the flawed hero — also important in that everyone has flaws — but without the pressure of being a hero. A legend? We should all be remembered. And we should all have caveats.
The best way to be remembered? Keep showing up.