Sunday, June 24, 2012

Low hanging fruit

Sometimes when I'm trying to figure out a better way to earn a living, I think I must be overlooking something that's right under my nose. There are two stories that come to mind.

In one story, a 3-year-old girl was climbing up the side of a high chair, using it as gymnastic equipment rather than as a chair. An adult warned the girl to "behave." The girl's 5-year-old brother said, "That's how she behaves."

Indeed, it is how she behaves. Now she is 29, and though she earns her income from massage therapy, what she is working on the most is circus arts, acrobatics, and capoeira.

Is there something so much a part of my nature that I've been doing it since I was 3? I asked my grandmother, and she said that I always seemed to keep track of people.

In the other story, a professor spoke to new PhD students at their orientation. He said that sometimes students reject a possible dissertation topic because it seems too easy. They feel they should choose something difficult. He advised them to choose what they are good at, what seems easy to them. He said that what seems like low fruit to them may be hard to reach for another person. Let the work be done by the person who can reach the fruit, not by the one who finds it difficult.

Is there something so easy and natural for me that it doesn't occur to me that it's a path I can follow? Maybe there is. My latest plan for a way to earn a living relates to something I did as a summer job when I was in college. At that time, it never occurred to me to pursue it as a career. I think it just seemed too easy and natural, and I thought I should do something more challenging.

My friend the writer said she used to believe that everyone wanted to be a writer. Wanting to be a writer was just so much a part of her that she didn't realize it was something unique. In the same way, are there things that flow so easily for me, that it doesn't even occur to me that they are aptitudes that not everyone has?

1 comment:

  1. hmm that's a good idea, i'm gonnaa think about that

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