New Horizons
I was talking with a friend a few days ago. She graduated a semester ahead of me because I decided to add onto my degree, yet I found a job in our shared career field within a few months while she landed her first job after I did and has since had 4 different job titles.
I'm pretty confident, however, that if you asked my friend if she regrets any of the decisions that's led her down this seemingly inconclusive path, she would answer you with an emphatic no. She doesn't need anyone to tell her that she's destined for great things and just hasn't found her niche yet, although many people including myself have done just that.
In our conversation, she said she wants to do something that's never been done.
That got me to thinking, aren't we all that way? Sure, many of us end up in jobs that have been done many times over, but should we let that stop us from striving to reach new horizons?
Should it matter to us how many great people came before us? Or should we learn to focus on our talents and what we can do from within a seemingly tried-and-true profession to add a new spark of life to it?
Why should doing something that's never been done always mean creating a new career? Why can't we do something that's never been done within an existing career?
Why should we try to fit into our careers instead of fitting our careers to ourselves?
Finding your niche doesn't mean fitting yourself into a ready-made mold. Finding your niche is about discovering who you are as a person and how you can apply that knowledge to your chosen field to make it better... something that my friend is striving to do.
The world is changing all around us. Technology is constantly being upgraded, especially in the field of journalism, and people expect the media to shift and flow with the changes. We're constantly on the threshold of new horizons. We find ourselves caught in the ebb and flow of change...
The future is ours for the taking. We just have to know how to grab on with both hands and shape it into the molds we want to fill instead of going back to the same old thing time and time again.
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5 comments
I see where you are coming from...and that is what was right for you. However, you would be doing a disservice to your friend by discouraging her. All the greatest visionarys started with a dream all their own. When she finds her's, it will be spectacular!
ReplyDeleteI don't do careers. I do jobs. Leave the careers to the people who like stale bread.
ReplyDelete@Trixie Racer: I'm not sure where you read in this post that I was discouraging my friend. In fact, I'm pretty sure I said that I supported her even if it wasn't in so many words. This was merely pondering how the majority of people want to do things that haven't been done and the possibility of achieving that goal through something that's already been established.
ReplyDelete@Richard: lol I guess there's a lot of stale bread in my future ;)
I can see both sides. I have stuck with my chosen career and excelled, but at the same time, when I went to school for threatre arts, I did not expect to be supervising 1500 maximum security mental health inmates and 300 officers. I guess what I am trying to say is that you never know what to expect from life. Those unexpected opportunities and chance happenings defines you just as much as your planned route. Thank you for writing this, I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Thomas. And I know exactly what you mean by chance encounters. I got my job purely by coincidence. I didn't go to school for broadcast and really didn't even open myself up to the possibility of it being a career. I just thought it was filling the time until I found a job in newspaper or magazines... which hasn't happened and may never happen, although I refuse to give up hope!
ReplyDelete