(Recommendation: Michael J. Gelb’s books about Leonardo da Vinci talk about this very succintly)

This topic contributes to my thoughts about discovery I made about a week ago. I had the rare opportunity of having my family gone for 4 days. I got to “do whatever I wanted to do” for that whole time. My discovery was that I’m pretty much ALWAYS doing what I want to do, and that I’ve realized the life I set out to create. But I can’t always tell this. When I’m so often responding to input or requests, my awareness gets distracted.

I love the idea of increasing my awareness to honor myself & the diversity of activities I’m involved in. I’ll check out that book!

My whole life I’ve been unable to commit to one interest. I had 5 or 6 majors in college before finally deciding I needed to be “practical” and majored in marketing. Then I took a marketing job and was ground into a pulp by the mechanics of sitting in a cubicle 40 hours a week trying to say the same thing different ways and attempting to convince the executives that product development ought to start with this “crazy” notion of asking our customers what they want.

So I went to grad school. What I realized after I finished my Master’s was that I had just chosen to do an interdisciplinary graduate degree because I liked the various subject fields, and that it had done nothing to improve my job prospects because it didn’t specialize me further.

I have been a television producer, a computer technician, a copywriter, a photographer, an optician, and an administrator in a law school. And I still don’t feel like I’ve found any ONE thing I want to do. Right now I’m struggling to pin down what my next thing is going to be. Perhaps the answer is to go with the flow instead of trying to force myself into another pigeonhole?

What I can say, however, is that having a broad background of knowledge has given me the ability to learn new things more quickly because I can correlate them to existing knowledge. What’s more, I’m able to see trends and opportunities much better than most. That’s a strength I can take anywhere.

I’m glad to see there are others out there like me.

I’ve let way too much of my life go by trying to find the “one thing” that I love the most and can master better than anyone. Almost 50 now and haven’t found it yet. So, now I’m pursuing (primarily) two things I find really fun and interesting, and am hoping the skills will follow as I learn and grow. If one ends up calling to me more, I’ll go that way. As a result, I’ve been in a much better mood and am not frozen by inaction when I was putting so much pressure on finding and pursuing that “one true thing.” The challenge is not to take on too many things at once, or I lose focus and can’t do anything well, and end up frazzled and exhausted. (And for that, naps are good!)

Pace yourself, and thanks for the good writing!

Thanks for the second book recommendation too. I’ve added it to my Amazon wish list (which I just found how to make!) and am sure I’ll come back for it soon (working on the cash flow right now).

Also, great point about facilitator-educators . . . that would be an ideal classroom format! But alas, much of the academic world wouldn’t get it.

Ok I had to think about what you wrote because something was bothering me a little.

This is random but related, I just came across this quote which is apropos because of the word “success” which is always problematic for me:

“Success is perishable and often outside our control. In contrast, excellence is something that’s lasting, dependable and within a person’s control.” Joe Paterno

It’s not precisely what I feel, but it’s nearby. I think it’s OK to do things even if you don’t become “excellent” at them, but I *really* think it is OK to do or be a certain way even if it has nothing to do with “success” which often has connotations of fame/prosperity.

To bring it back around, success doesn’t validate who I am or that it’s OK to be that way.

So I think that saying “It’s OK to have multiple interests because diversification is a good business strategy/prosperity strategy” still sets it up as needing justification, i.e. it is coming from the position of it not being acceptable and it needing to defend it or justify it in some way. Does that make sense?

In other words, it’s OK because it’s who I am and I’m OK. Rather than it’s OK because it really is beneficial in XYZ ways. That’s where I want to be coming from.

You

ROCK!!!

Thanks!

I’m heartened that this thread is getting such thoughtful interaction, I guess I am not alone in this!

I wanted to mention another book that was helpful in a similar way and might be relevant to some of you, Gifted Grownups: The Mixed Blessings of Extraordinary Potential. It’s about how “talented and gifted” kids grow up to be adults whose brains work a little differently than most people, including that they often learn jobs fairly quickly and then get bored, and that having interesting stimuli is like a physical need to keep the brain happy.

Which actually is part of what was so awful about college…I ended up doing great in classes I was interested in (there were a few). But in the ones I had to take for my degree, I had to force myself to memorize information that felt completely irrelevant to me and was thus painfully boring. It was torture to sit through lectures. Especially when I wished the prof would just make the damn point already. The idea that I was supposed to sustain interest in somebody else’s lesson plans is now kind of ludicrous to me. Wouldn’t I be the best judge of what I want to learn about a topic? What if teachers acted more as facilitators than as dictators-of-curriculum?

Ok, I’ll get off my “higher” education soapbox now.

@Michael Awesome! That seems like a really great way to see your interests so far in a nutshell. I like it! FYI here is the author of The Renaissance Soul’s website which has some interesting materials/downloads including the first chapter of the book and educational handouts for career advisors and guidance counselors (which I found quite validating since a lot of this “should do one thing” trauma comes from the whole “career” crapola we were fed in school).