You can’t just string together bartending with clowning and call yourself a polymath.
Or can you?
Nobody respectable calls themselves a polymath, which is too bad because there’s a real passion for life behind that word.
The unfortunate vibe around the word polymath is that it’s a thirst for status and implies almost that there are required skills: must be able to give a recital with either piano or violin and read Latin & Greek.
But why those sorts of requirements? I was in my company Slack accusing Better Humans’ editor, Terrie, of being a polymath. She does a great job of editing and managing that pub, but also is an excellent performance bubbler (it’s a thing), a solid bartender back in the day, lock picking hobbyist, regular in the pyrotechnics community, former zine publisher, informed permaculturist, has slaughtered a goat (and given me some to take home), and a lot, lot more.
I guess you’d just say zest for life.
If you have a lot of zest and a modicum of skill at learning and you’ve lived a bit, then you definitely end up being an eclectic form of polymath. We need a word with less baggage for the result of living life with zest.
