Keep cultivating all that potential; it makes a charming substitute for ever having to prove it.

The quote goes after the one compliment you have learned to live off: the suggestion that you are full of promise. It is not praise. It is a stay of execution, granted by people too polite to mention that promise has an expiry date and yours has quietly passed. Potential is the most flattering word in the language because it asks nothing of you. It requires no finished work, no risk, no public failure, only a vague sense that something splendid is coming. You have kept that something splendid on ice for years, mentioning it at interviews and over dinner, polishing it while duller people shipped their inferior versions and got on with their lives. Notice that nobody says it about the person who has already done the thing. They say it about you, usually with a sympathetic tilt of the head and a glance at the clock. The line lands hardest when someone asks what you are working on and you produce a description of a project rather than the project itself, or when you hear the word journey leave your mouth again. Cultivate away. It is the only crop your particular field has ever produced, and it has never once fed anyone.