Of All The Fortunes I Could Get
I end up with these two. The first says, "Avoid unchallenging occupations—they waste your talents." The second reads, "You set your sights high and enjoy striving for the best things in life."
Avoid Unchallenging Occupations
This isn't very helpful to me. It comes at a time when my wife wants me to find work, any kind of work. She doesn't see Steemit taking off fast enough, so she wants me to do something else. Anything else.
Okay, not quite anything else, but as far as she's concerned, the doors are wide open across the employment spectrum.
According to my fortune cookie fortune, however, there's all kinds of jobs I need to avoid so as to not waste my talents. I'm not sure if that's the main criteria people use when seeking a job, but it seems pretty important for the fortune cookie fortune.
I probably shouldn't pay it much heed, but I can't deny the timing of this fortune is especially bad. Warning me away from unchallenging occupations severely limits the field, although, I feel like there's plenty of challenging jobs that might waste my talents because they have nothing to do with what I'm good at. It would seem to me that those types of jobs would be the most challenging of all.
Based on the fortune cookie fortune, it appears to me that my options are: avoid unchallenging occupations that specifically waste my talents, and that I should probably avoid challenging occupations that also waste my talents. I think wasting my talent is key here.
Which means, if I am to follow this advice, I need to take stock of my talents. Probably a hard look, one I'm not entirely ready to address in this fortune cookie fortune post. But before that, I need to determine if I should heed it at all, because it will certainly take longer to find and secure such employment, and I'm not sure if that will make my wife happy. She will also wonder why I'm turning down so many potential jobs since I'm not about to tell her it's because the fortune cookie fortune told me to.
The other troubling thing is, would doing what I do on Steemit be considered an occupation? I would say no, it's not really an occupation. It's not a job, which is part of the occupation definition, but writing is a profession, which is the other part of the definition. So maybe Steemit counts? If so, I need to consider, too, if it's challenging or a waste of my talents.
Truth to tell, it's challenging in some ways, and not so much in others. I also feel like some of what I'm good at it is actually showcased here, but maybe not so much others. Do I have to have an occupation that isn't wasting any of my talents at all? Fortune cookie fortune, I need more guidance.
You Set Your Sights High
Images source—Glen Anthony Albrethsen
I do have a tendency to do this. In too many cases, though, I've set my sights too high. There are so many things I would do, and others I really want to do, if I had the wherewithal to do them. Accomplishing some of those now would probably require me to take a trip back in time and make different life decisions for them to potentially work out. Others seem to be just out of reach, and it's those that aggravate me the most. There always seems to be another step that must be taken.
I do enjoy striving for the best things in life. I have this mindset that I don't need to settle, that I can have anything I set my mind to. By and large, I think I've achieved a form of the best things in life. We live in a nice, quiet neighborhood in a nice home in a part of the country that has temperate weather mostly, lower crime, lower cost of living, and so forth. I have a wife who is definitely the best part of my life, along with two sons and their families, which I also consider the best that I can expect to have.
I don't live in mansion. I'm not wealthy. I can't just go and do anything I might want to do, when I want to do it. I can't help out monetarily as much as I would like, or for that matter, as much as I used to.
But then, the fortune cookie fortune doesn't say I have the best things in life, only that I enjoy striving for those things. Maybe I obtain them, maybe I don't. It's the striving for them that brings me enjoyment, and I believe that to be true. I've learned to be happy with good enough, while continuing to go for the best. Maybe I achieve more of that, maybe I don't. I feel like, barring the unforeseen (which is hard to bar if you can't see it), I have some years ahead of me yet to strive and perhaps end up with more of the best things in life.