Ever found that you’re really good, great even, at something you hate?
I was a great supermarket checker back in the day, but I hated it. I seriously considered driving my car into a telephone pole every single day on my way to that job.
I have such a good fashion sense that people have paid me to put together ensembles for them.
I do not give a rat’s ass what I wear or how I look. Or, as my sister once put it “With your fashion sense, why do you persist in walking around looking like an unmade bed?”
Well, not any more, but when I was in high school I was a whiz at soccer. In PE class I would go up against guys on the varsity team and out-play them.
But I hate soccer, I only played for the few weeks we covered it in PE. I never tried out for the team and never regretted it.
I was working on my degree in computer science in the 1980’s. I thought the cobol class was interesting but swore I didn’t want to be a cobol programmer.
Left my programming career twenty years later STILL a cobol programmer. :mad:
Pabitel, you’re making life difficult for me as you have co-opted my tagline. 20 paces at Dawn, Sir! (or Madam as the case may be.) PS I’m fine if we share, Ben Franklin had all sorts of good ideas and I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.
I’m good with Tech. I understand most techy things and I can make my way around a computers/systems with few issues. It’s made my living for the last 30 years and I hate it. I’m also good at social engineering when I want to be, but I’m not a huge fan of making people do things just because I want them to. Ironically, I do like helping people find thier best selves but hate listening to people whine. Confused yet? I am.
Because my job has become mostly scanning and saving documents, and then finding those documents on our organization system, I’ve become really good at that. My filter-searching capabilities are quite honed and I’m usually the one people turn to to track something down.
However, I hate it all. I used to do a lot of word processing and proofing, but that’s kind of drying up as attorneys are doing this for themselves. I miss it and don’t like that I’ve become a scanning clerk.
Cleaning the house (or a house) I hate,hate,hate it. But for some reason I am good at it. My friends and family have found out my secret super-power and are always recruiting me into their messes. So thoughtless of them.
Typing. I type pretty quickly (not court reporter speed, but fast for normal people). It means I get invited to a lot of witness interviews, because I can take near-verbatim notes. So I end up writing the reports. I don’t mind the actual report-writing, but eight hours of detailed note-taking (sometimes over multiple days), often in a windowless room, is super boring and super draining.
Two times I’ve played golf. Both times with people that play often. Both times I was told I could be very good at it and should take it up. Both times I played I hated it. No desire to ever play again.
I’m good at housecleaning and can enjoy it, in the moment. But I often get so detail-oriented that I’m left depressed afterward (“The baseboards behind the refrigerator will never be truly clean,* never*!”)
I was fairly good at math in school when I put my mind to it, but never liked it. I did well enough on the AP Calculus exam to start college with eight credits of math, but I never took any again, so most of it’s gone now.
Public speaking in any context. Stressful, but it’ll never show during. Before, yeah. (Stress nausea.) After, sure. (Shakes.) But during? Total Plastic Man. It’s like some extraterrestrial takes possession and starts animating my body and voice like whatever kind of speaker I’m supposed to be. (Professor. Preacher. Command briefer. Whatever the need.)
Writing routines in FileMaker that loop through line after line of text, only some of which fits any kind of predictable pattern, branching off into conditional statements and assessments of probability and otherwise making hierarchical assumptions so as to extract individual fields values like Account#, Date, Time, Absence or Presence of a Response, and, if a Response exists, the Date, Time, Respondent Name, etc, and the text of the body of whatever they wrote, all from humongous freehand oceans of text with whatever-the-hell someone decided to type while on the phone.
Drywall. Good enough that professionals would compliment me and even offer me jobs. I seriously hate it.
I was good at COBOL too. Hated it. And FORTRAN. Liked that, but nobody ever offered me a job writing either one. Ended up writing various flavors of RPG for 30+ years. Liked that. Hated working for corporations.
Several sports, football, boxing, wrestling. I enjoyed casual sports but had no interest in organized regimented sports. The wrestling I actually did enjoy but my school did not have a program for it. Once I started going to practice I would have likely changed my mind about that to.
Sales. It’s an integral part of my duties as the school owner and I’m passingly good at it. I need to be better, but oh, I hate it with the passion of a thousand flaming suns.
Collecting money from people who did’t want to pay it. I once had a very bad man tell me once that my ability to convince people to pay their drug debts without using violence was truly a gift. All I can say about that “gift” is that if there is a hell, I’m now guaranteed a spot there.