Serendipitous Skills

I recently came across an idea that talked about casting a broad net to build a unique combo of skills. And as someone who was always drawn to countless things for the sake of exploring my own curiosity I found it to resonate with me.

Early on, I was really interested in many performing arts. I played instruments, was in bands and choirs, and even explored theater for a while. Much later, this led me to jump at opportunities to speak at events, which eventually helped me land jobs - with a hiring manager specifically sharing that they saw a video of a talk I had given months earlier.

Even before it was a subject in school I started learning English because I was fascinated by the idea of a different language. I later learned French and eventually went to Latin America as an exchange student before I had really learned much Spanish, simply because the idea of a different culture excited me. Fast forward and a former coworker pulls me in to help support projects in LatAm because he heard about this background of mine and that I speak Spanish and lived there for a while.

While working as a consultant that same curiosity came into play on countless projects, especially when conducting research. Did I know much about cars? Nope. Did I geek out about performance tires and torque by week 3 of our research trip? Definitely. (Though I still prefer my tools to have undo buttons, for everybody's safety).

One takeaway for me is that it is not only ok, but definitely valuable to explore wide ranges of interests. Not one of these made sense to me "professionally" at the time - except for that brief phase when I dreamt of becoming a rockstar maybe?

Now if you'll excuse me, there are some seemingly random books calling my name and I really want to know about the health effects of carrying heavy objects and its evolutionary background.