Have I put in my 12,000 hours?

Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, puts forth the notion that to be exceptional at something, you must have spent at least 12,000 hours doing it. For playing guitar, I'm not even close. I figure that since I was 15, I've played my guitar for about 30 minutes a day, which works out to roughly 6000 hours. For songwriting, though, things might be a bit different. I would say that I have spent at least a few hours a day thinking about songs over my 3 decades of musing, which totals nearly 22,000 hours. Of course, there's one more factor in Malcolm's Outliers: they work at their craft for 12,000 hours with the intent to get better. Yeah, that last factor's a bastard! I have not done that with anything save writing. So maybe my lyrics are Outlier quality? Possibly, but doubtful, seeing as I have made nary a dime from them!