But an outsider hearing his story can see steady progress, progress that has resulted in Momofuku Noodle Bar, his unusual restaurant on First Avenue in the East Village.
But progress -- including, perhaps, progress in safety -- has bypassed both.
He said: "Technological progress without equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us.
On the same day that Pettitte warmed hearts by making progress — minimal progress, but progress — in his protracted recovery from a strained left groin muscle, Burnett became the second straight Yankees starter to fail to complete four innings.
"We see the president's re-election as a precondition for progress and not progress in itself," he said.
They made good progress, we're making good progress in the economy.
Massachusetts, for instance, has made spectacular progress in math and good progress in reading in fourth and eighth grade.
It said that NASA's progress was uneven, with substantial progress in some areas but none that had been completed.
I will say that the last eight years have been years of such remarkable economic progress and progress in lowering the crime rate and welfare reform, in significant measure because of his dedication to trying to create a better future".
But I am worried by the tendency to conflate progress in Lagos with progress in Nigeria and the increasingly dominant "Africa rising" narrative, which focuses on megacities and hurries the cameras away from places such as my village.
"It seems to me that there's a kind of hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq and, most of all, speak of no progress in Iraq," he said.
