doing something just because you're good at it

When I was high school I had a friend who asked me to fill in for her at work one night when she was sick.  She sold Tupperware at home-hosted parties.   She was a fully-fledged grown up and I was sixteen so the whole idea that I could step into her role scared me breathless.  I demurred, she insisted and instructed, and I sold Tupperware that night like it was my job.  For one night, it was. It was fun — hilarious, actually — to take the lead with a living room full of women talking about kitchen storage.  We played games, we laughed, we talked.  And I sold a record-breaking amount of Tupperware.

At sixteen years old, I had my first adventure in resisting these words, "You should do this!  You're really good at it!"  Looking back, I'm quite sure I could've kept breaking records for Tupperware.  I'm pretty sure that it would have been fun and had I followed that path, who knows where it would have taken me?  However, I was vaguely filled with a sense that I wanted to make money and spend my time differently.  The "vaguely" part was the problem; I couldn't come up with really good answers for why I didn't want to sell Tupperware.*  That the feeling is vague doesn't make it less trivial, it just may not be strong enough to resist the enthusiasm of some "other" who has such great ideas about what direction you should take.  Over the years, many people have told me how either a skill or a relationship (with a romantic partner or parent) sent them down a path that they had very little heart to follow.

 "Once I figured out how to fix my dad's computer, I had a reputation in the family as a wizard with electronics.  Throughout high school, I heard nothing but how my future was in computer science.  I don't mind computers, but I think of them like, I don't know...spatulas or something!  They're just tools.  I don't want to live my life working with computers!  I want to be on stage, I want to act!"

"I've been playing the piano since I was a little kid and there is no doubt that I can make a living at it.  People are always impressed with my skill and want me to play for them.  But when I get hired as an accompanist and I play all day, you know how I feel?  Bored. Like I'm typing someone else's novel!"

"You know why I'm a lawyer?  Because of the Vietnam War.  I didn't know what else to do other than stay in graduate school and I didn't know what else to study, so I went to law school.  I never really wanted to be a lawyer, but I've made a good life for myself and my family.  I've just always wondered what else there might have been for me.  I have a sneaking feeling I could've been good in lots of other fields, but I wonder if it's too late now."

"I moved to Bozeman to be with this woman.  She was a professor, so that's the work I saw every day.  I guess that's how I became an academic.  We broke up and I just kept going down that path and here I am.  Oddly, I'm still in her field.  Maybe I'm actually in her debt, but I don't know what I would've done otherwise.  Some part of me always wonders."

There is no prescribed course of action in this post, just a question about your default status.  Just because "you're really good at..." something might not mean you want to spend your life at it.  Just because the default setting overrode the vague sense of other possibilities, doesn't mean the setting can't be adjusted.  And if you've gone down a path that you've grown to love, that's great, too!  Whatever skills I have that drove that odd success all those years ago when I sold Tupperware for one night are still flourishing in me, I just deploy them in other areas where I'm more connected to a sense of personal mission.

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*I should make clear that I mean no disparagement of Tupperware products.  I sentimentally cherish a much-worn orange mixing bowl that I acquired the night of that infamous party and recently went to great lengths to replace the lid to it.