I watched the film Without Limits tonight, about ill-fated runner Steve Prefontaine, unaware that he was from around here, or indeed much of anything about him, except that he died young in a car wreck. I was surprised at how young he died, actually.

The film was strong, I thought, though slight. I almost felt like it was a Cliff's Notes version of a much longer movie, which, I suppose, is a lot like "Pre"'s actual life.

The screenwriter and director, the highly regarded Robert Towne, frames the film around Prefontaine's belief that talent had nothing to do with his achievements, that it all came down to determination. He comes to question this belief later in life, but he's really cut short before he has to really face up to it. Thinking about it, I have to say I've always approached life from the opposite direction: Talent is damned near everything. If you don't have the capacity for it, you're wasting your time. (As Groucho said, "Try, try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it.") This is, though, a fabulous cop-out, and I know it. When it comes down to it, as with much in life, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Lately, I've had to face the hard truth that I lack the kind of drive that inhabits a lot of people, by which I mean that I often resist doing something I have to until I'm pushed. It's a question of discipline, I suppose, as well as the misguided belief that I work best under pressure. Given a deadline, I will write the hell out of something, though I will push it as long as I think I can get away with. Lacking those sorts of deadlines or pressures, though, I have been slow to achieve as much as I feel I should have.

But much like Pre, the key is finding that direction, and I'm still struggling with which way I should be headed. (Prefontaine languished in other sports before he discovered running.) I fear that I may never find that direction, floating around from one half-hearted enterprise to the next for the rest of my life, like the Tom Hulce character in Parenthood, until I wind up on the wrong side of some demented mobster. However, I can take some comfort in the fact that I am not alone in this regard among people my age. This search for purpose is what the 20s are about, or so I am told, and given my experience I am inclined to believe it.

Not that it makes it any easier. I regularly feel like a sham, a failure and a fool. I know that if I could just discover the appropriate venue, I would have so much energy to put into it that I could achieve more than I can imagine. The problem is, I consistently wait for someone else to show me that direction, and that often leads to disaster. In one recent example, I got so caught up in what I thought I was supposed to be doing given my role models' actions that I completely lost sight of what I actually wanted. I behaved like an ass more than once because I wasn't where I felt I should be, in spite of the fact that, on further examination, it wasn't where I wanted to end up anyway. There was no There there.

Right now, I have just run out of ideas, and the miserable economy isn't helping matters in terms of presenting options. Another hurdle to overcome, I suppose. As they say, if it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing. Of course, the ones who relish pointing that out aren't going through it themselves, the pricks.