When I was growing up, this was about the time we would get out of school

It was only when I became a parent that I realized how amazingly short our kids' summer break from school really was.

At least in our district (though I think this is common), they don't even have 12 full weeks off before they're right back in the classroom.

Not that I think there's anything wrong with that, by the way. Indeed, during my time working with The Cleveland Foundation, I came to see some advantages to having year-round school with extended breaks between quarters/semesters.

It's just that, when I was a kid, summer vacation seemed to go on forever. It was great. We would get out in mid-June and not be back until after Labor Day.

I don't remember a single summer ever flying by or seeming too short, which may suggest that my friends and I did it right and made the most of our vacation time.

Later on as a parent, however, those 11 1/2 weeks would fly by in an instant. That's probably a function of time in general passing more quickly once you become an adult, but I could never reconcile the fleeting nature of my kids' summer vacations with the seemingly longer breaks I had as a kid.

In any event, as today's headline suggests, this is about the time of year in the 1970s and 80s when we would have our last day of school. That seems quaint now because, as far as I know, no local school district has been in session for at least a week, and many for longer than that. The kids almost universally get out in mid/late May or early June these days.

I don't know that that's any better or worse than the way we did it in my youth, it's just different.

Even with my kids grown, I still can't get used to it.

Should you spend more time getting even better at the things at which you already excel, or trying to improve the things at which you're not naturally good?

One of the best bosses I've ever had (and I've had some very, very good ones) was Cindy, who was originally my colleague at Dix & Eaton before becoming my manager at The Cleveland Foundation. She very deftly balanced being instructive and inspirational with being constructively critical.

If you've ever managed people, you know that's often not as easy as it looks.

I used to work on a variety of print pieces at the foundation, mostly newsletters and the like but occasionally larger and fancier publications. It requires a range of skills to put something like that together, and the one area where I never had any problem was writing copy. In general, I'm pretty good at that and I like doing it.

Where I wasn't especially good was reviewing and providing feedback on the design and layout. A graphic designer would send us a draft, and in most cases I would look at it and say, "That's great!"

And I meant it. I rarely had any changes to the look and feel of a given piece, partly because I am no designer and, honestly, any piece of semi-professional design is impressive to me.

Cindy, however, always had feedback for designers, and it was inevitably helpful feedback. She had an eye for improving communication by maximizing the way it was packaged, and I envied her for it.

One time I told her I would try to develop a more critical eye for evaluating graphic design, and her response was insightful.

She told me, "That's fine, but I wouldn't worry too much about it. You're only going to get so good at it, and your time is probably better spent improving the things you're good at and making an even bigger impact with those."

Which makes sense, I suppose. Your margin for improvement when it comes to a given task or skill may be somewhat limited to begin with, and it's even more limited when you're (a) not already good at it, and/or (b) don't particularly enjoy it in the first place.

So in answer to the question in the headline, I'm not saying you shouldn't try to shore up the areas where you're lacking and which might be beneficial for you to improve. But don't bang your head against the wall needlessly. You can probably make a bigger contribution (whether it's at home or work or wherever) going from good to great with the stuff you already enjoy doing.

All of which is why I don't plan to practice my carpentry skills any time soon because, let's be honest, tools and I aren't ever going to really get along with each other.

I've carried these nine books with me from job to job for the last 20 years

It can sound pretentious to call your job a "craft," but I do consider the writing portion of my vocation to be just that.

Whatever your personal craft may be, you should never stop trying to get better at it. I plan to be working toward clearer, more concise writing up until the day I die (well, maybe I'll take that day off...but not the day before).

There was a time when it was imperative for writers to keep a set of reference books at their desk. A dictionary and thesaurus were de rigueur, of course, but depending on the focus of your writing, there were others on the required reading list.

One was a stylebook, such as the Associated Press Stylebook pictured here. Stylebooks tell you everything from whether to hyphenate certain words to how you abbreviate the states to which nouns are capitalized and which are not. And everything in between.

You'll also find a book of quotations on my shelf, as well as Plotnik's "The Elements of Editing" and the densely populated "Macmillan Handbook of English," 1960 edition.

Here's the thing: These books, or at least most of the information they contain, can be found online -- in most cases quite easily. Technically, I don't need the physical books whenever I have easy access to Google.

But I keep them for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I still love the feeling of cracking open a book to get to whatever I'm looking for (just as I still love reading an actual newspaper). They have traveled with me from workplace to workplace over the past two decades, starting at the Cleveland Clinic and moving on to Dix & Eaton, The Cleveland Foundation, OneCommunity, Vitamix, and now Goodyear.

There are memories wrapped up in these books. A few I associate with particular work projects, maybe a script or press release of which I was proud. Others take me back to my newspaper days, when the whole idea of writing for money was new and exciting, and I wanted so badly to be good at it.

There's also this: As much as I love and embrace technology, I also believe books hearken back to a time when the written word was more revered and the library card catalog meant something. They represent a pathway to knowledge and experiences otherwise unattainable for most of us, even online.

Books are, in my mind, the genteel medium. And at age 51, I'm just old enough to appreciate that.

(By the way, the slim brown volume tucked between the AP Stylebook and the Macmillan Handbook is "The Word: An Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing." So good. Oh man, so good.)