Taking risks

I got an e-mail from a head hunter looking for a patent attorney, yesterday.  I've been looking for a job as a patent attorney for a long time.  This job looked like a fit, though it would have meant moving to Virginia. A few years ago I would have applied for it.

This time I did not.  I have developed this dream that I am going to become a content creator, that I am going to write novels and comedy, act, improvise, do standup, sing, and do calligraphy.

So far, I have never made money doing any of these things.  My father, who paid for law school, would not have approved.   He liked my being a patent attorney.  It was one of those small satisfactions that I had in my relationship with him that he approved of my academic performance and my career choice.  Otherwise he was a pretty dour, distant, critical person, who was difficult to relate to.

Perhaps I would not have had the courage to say no to this headhunter if I had not had a improv workshop with David Razowsky [ http://www.davidrazowsky.com/improvisacting/Welcome.html ] this week and if he had not said right into my face that he had been doing this for 35 years and I was a strong improvisor.   He told me to celebrate that.

I sort of froze, like a deer in the headlights.  I wasn't expecting such a comment.  He had been yelling at me before.  I should have thanked him, but I was stunned.

So I said no to the head hunter, not that I would necessarily have gotten the job anyway.  I've been failing to get jobs I applied for for a long time now. Still, I wonder if I have become a bit like Jack from "Jack and the Beanstalk" who traded a cow for a handful of magic beans.  Jack was exceptionally lucky that the beans turned out to be truly magic.  By all rights they shouldn't have been.  

Let's hope that  I have at least a fraction of Jack's luck.