“Compared to most of the women who come in here, you’re suited to an unusually wide range of careers.”
It was about four years ago.
Life felt stuck, and I’d gone to a fortune-teller everyone swore was uncannily accurate.
She told me I could do anything.
Put kindly, it meant I’d be average at everything.
Put the other way, it meant I had no real talent.
“The saju reader said you’d be good at anything. It’s in your chart.”
When I was young, those words from my mother felt less like praise and more like homework.
I was supposed to be good at anything, and yet I wasn’t good at a single thing.
It was only recently that I understood what that meant.
At a startup where you have to handle everything on your own,
I watched myself, with AI at my back, actually getting all of it done.
Being good at nothing in particular — maybe that was my talent all along.
The ability to gather scattered pieces and weave them into one.
A talent that, not long ago, didn’t even have a name.
Of course, this kind of talent doesn’t grow on its own.
It still takes effort, and it still takes study.
I have no exceptional talent, but I do have a geek’s capacity for obsession.
I was never the bright kid with top grades,
but I got along with everyone, whatever their gender, age, or field.
And the kid who was only ever so-so
has, of all times, run into an age that’s turning the world upside down.
And now I stand at a fork in the road.
Do I become the employee who can be handed anything and get it done?
Or do I take this ability to do anything, and use it to do what I want?