Nora Ephron died last year about this time; she was 71. From what I’ve been able to gather from reports about her life and death, she was an Austenesque essayist, novelist, and screenwriter with a flair for self-deprecation-one of my favorite devices-who started out writing for newspapers in the early 1960s. I know of Ephron only through her screenwriting efforts: “When Harry Met Sally” and “Silkwood.” Never read “Heartburn,” never read any of her Esquire pieces, never read “I Feel Bad About My Neck.”

But I did read this 2010 Ephron snippet which appeared in her L.A. Times obit:

“You do get to a certain point in life where you have to realistically, I think, understand that the days are getting shorter, and you can’t put things off thinking you’ll get to them someday. If you really want to do them, you better do them. There are simply too many people getting sick, and sooner or later you will. So I’m very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so you can do a great deal of it.”

I love that sentiment and Ephron’s prose.

I suppose the trick is discovering what it is you love doing. And allowing that although you may not do what you love well, or perhaps just well enough, you do it just the same.