Back in the '90s, I [Mark] was a business analyst at an internet startup. One of the guys there had a Ph.D. in astrophysics, an MA in photography, and another MA in violin performance. He was the database administrator. Yes, you read that right: he was our DBA, and he was cool with that.
I once asked him: "How is it that guys with multiple interests and skills in the arts don't end up doing those things for a living?"
He said: "We discovered we didn't have to."
That statement has rolled around in my head a lot in the last fifteen years or so. At first, I thought: "Of course! You'd have to be obsessed, driven, desperate, and devoid of other options!"
Now I see it a bit differently. As an adult, I have tried many times to specialize, to choose one skill or talent over another. The effort always fails. The things that are deepest in my soul may wait their turn for a time, but if I ignore one for too long, it simply steps in front of me and grabs me by the shirt collar, looks me in the eye and says: "LISTEN to me!"
I know the things I need to pay attention to now. They're the things that are still here after all these years. They're the things that give me chills, make me cry, keep me up till all hours.
I may not have to do them for a living, but it would make sense if I did. One way or another, they're not going away.
Another guy I worked with at the startup was in his mid-twenties, a former track guy who played ultimate Frisbee at lunch and could do two thousand vertical feet in five miles without really breaking a sweat. On one such hike, I watched him "get some air" coming down the trail. I told him I wished I could do what he did.
He shook his head and said: "No, right now I'm probably in the best shape I'll ever be. I wish I could do what you do. You're going to get nothing but better at it for the rest of your life."
He was right. In the last four years, Ping and I have taken radical steps, partly so I could have the chance to see what I could do with "the other 80% of me" that I wasn't able to focus on when I worked in IT. The experiment has revealed a lot of things, both strengths and weaknesses.
While I am still determining how to make my skills self-supporting, I know much better now what I can do with them.
Besides, they're not going away.
