Fabulous singing voice, unusual natural athletic ability, great musical ability (revealed through forced lessons you excelled at without trying), amazing skills in some scientific/technological area, etc.
I was thinking about this because I was thinking about a couple of friends of mine who were musical prodigies who both ended up having successful careers (Aprile Millo and Lisa Coleman). I was thinking of how strange and sad it would have been if they had taken no honest pleasure in their natural gifts, and how often that might happen. I was wondering if that’s rare or more common than you’d imagine.
There’s the flip side, of course, people who love to participate in something that they have zero talent for, American Idol being the ultimate proof. And a friend recently told me that I had told her something a long time ago that she had a really hard time hearing, but finally realized was true: I told her that she had no talent for debate and she should give it up. (She takes it WAY too personally, gets very upset, and loses all perspective.)
I’m sure we have loads of natural talent here on the Dope…how do you feel about it? Is it a joy to you, a burden, or neither?
Interesting question. Some of this, though, comes down to what is “natural talent” and what is gained through lots of hard work. There may be tons of people who have whatever natural propensity for being good at golf that Tiger Woods has, but they’ve never picked up a golf club. On the other side, someone who plays a mean lead guitar mayve has zero natural ability and just doggedly pushed through and practiced 5 hours a day for 20 years or whatever. And the only reason they would do that is that they liked doing it.
I sort of remember reading a book about music once. There was a section about natural talents, and as far as musical ability goes, there are four natural talents. People who had two or three of those tended to excel, as they saw their deficiencies as challenges. But people who had all four talents didn’t feel challenged and tended not to go into music.
I’m not sure if I got any of that right. It’s been a long time since I read it.
This sounds silly, but I had a ton of talent as a cable/broadband technician. I was one of the fastest, most detailed, most accurate techs at my company, but I utterly hated the work. I’m no fan of being up a utility pole in Michigan winters and springs, so I moved to Arizona to begin my teaching career (and, you know, use my degree!).
Putting in contact lenses. The first time I was putting them in, guided by the optometrist, I did it in a snap and she said I was one of the quickest learners she’d seen.
Too bad I don’t like the feeling of them in my eyes. Four eyes all the way!
When I was around 10 and finally convinced my mother to let me quit taking piano lessons because I hated them so much, my instructor offered to teach me for free because he liked teaching me so much. Alas, it was not a money issue, it was simply that I hated it.
Later on, in high school, I got in with a group of friends that were all in band. I wanted to be like them, so I started taking Saxophone lessons. A year later, I went to Band Camp with them. There were (I think) 3 levels of bands. During try-outs, the instructors listened to each kid and separated them into whatever band their skill level was appropriate for. I was hoping to be good enough to get into the middle-level band, having only played for a year, and being up against kids who had played for 4-5 years. I ended up as first chair in the highest-skill-level band.
But still, I hated practicing. Put the Saxophone down after high school and haven’t touched it since. Mr. Athena keeps trying to get me into music as he’s very much into his instruments (guitar & bagpipe mostly) but I just can’t bear the idea of doing it.
According to coworkers and observers, I am great at dealing with people in public meetings. I can’t tell you how much I LOATHE dealing with people of any kind, much less people with an ax to grind who think the absolute worst of govt. workers like me and have been dying for a chance to say so.
I was good enough at writing history essays that despite not taking a single class in British history until my second year of college I was able to complete a doctoral dissertation in it at Oxford.
And the sad truth is, I just really don’t care that much about history any more. I could probably teach a college course in British history on a couple of weeks’ notice (and the university I work for has me on standby for that, just in case), but I just don’t have much interest in learning about it again. A lot of that was from burnout, but it’s been 6 years since I finished my dissertation and I’ve never regained interest. Sometimes I’ll have people fascinated about the monarchy or other parts of British history find out about what I did and start asking excitedly about how great it must have been to study history at Oxford, and I almost feel bad that I just don’t share their enthusiasm. To be honest I wonder if I ever did.
I just found another field I was interested in, and started working full-time in that, and now I have a decent career going. The research skills I picked up while studying history helped tremendously, as did the public speaking experience, so it wasn’t a complete loss. I do feel like I lost a lot, though.
I don’t know how else to describe it, but I have a knack for finding lost random objects and computer files. I can get lost three blocks from home but by God if you want a green Sharpie, there’s one in the shoebox on the shelf in the server room.
When it gets annoying is when I hear the dreaded “ask Tomato, she knows where everything is.”
I’m hardly a genius, but like all of my family I have a natural aptitude for music, and have a nice singing voice. I’ve had zero interest in cultivating either, since it involves performing (which I hate more than anything) and practicing by rote (boring!). I was forced to take piano lessons and sing in the church and school choirs until I was a teenager and my mom finally gave up on yelling at me about it, and was utterly miserable. Now I am the only one in my immediate and extended family who is not a proficient musician or a singer (or both). Many of them make or have made a living through music (teaching music at university, composer, church organist). My cousin was actually one of the top violists in her age group when she graduate high school about 10 years ago, and could have made a solid living playing the viola… but she was also pushed into it by her mother, and after she went off to college she rebelled and hasn’t touched an instrument since.
I’m also talented at sculpture, that I always enjoyed doing as long as I got to make but I wanted, but I don’t really do it any more. I don’t get the pleasure from creating things or performing that most naturally creative people do. I’d rather read about stuff than do it.
While working in a lab, we used to have to make our own very small thermocouples from wire while using a microscope. Making them required a steady hand, practice, and of course, patience. Needless to say, nobody enjoyed doing it.
I was good at it, so I somehow got tagged to make them for other people a lot.
I have a gift for customer service rivalling that of Progressive’s Flo, but inwardly I feel like Patrick Magee freaking out while Malcolm McDowell is singing in the tub…
I am, according to friends, family, and my annual employee reviews, an “amazing people person” especially when dealing with grumpy, out of sorts, or otherwise unhappy people that I have to make feel happy again.
I certainly don’t feel that I am good at this, and instead feel much more akin to the xkcd comic here: xkcd: Lease
I really despise working with the public because of that insecurity, and if I could do my job without ever encountering a patron, I’d be a much less worried person.
I was a nightstocker at Safeway for 6 years and I was amazing at it, but it’s the worst, absolutely shittiest job ever (okay, maybe not ever, but trust me it fucking blows). I would seriously consider drifting into oncoming traffic every single night on my way there.
Filing. It doesn’t interest me even a little bit. But I worked as a temp and discovered that most people are either bad at it, or slow, or both. And most people are intimidated by big piles of it, especially backlogs.
I can put on headphones and just start rough-sorting, fine-sorting, and filing away. After awhile, it’s like the hands are doing it. Listen to the music. Let the toughts wander. Watch the pile melt. Labelling takes only slightly more thought.
After two weeks at my first filing assignment, I started opening file drawers and finding my eye immediately locked onto the exact place that the file would be going. That bit was a little spooky.
One company started passing me between departments to file backlogs and relabel entire files at office specialist pay, because that was cheaper than paying someone slower at filing wages. I was pretty good at finding misfiles, too.
