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1/ Do not try to understand your life in terms of your skills or passions. They are NOT predictive of what you'll end up doing.
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2/ The best predictor of your life outcome is what persistently annoys you about your life situation: your itches.
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4/ Good exercise to figure out your itches is to ask what your life would have been like 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400 years ago
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5/ That's coming of age in: 1964, 1914, 1814, 1614, 1214, 414, 1187 BC, 4387 BC. All of post hunter-gatherer history basically.
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6/ Spanning all history averages out skills of era and grand narrative biases (passions). That leaves basic itches that drive you.
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8/ I did the exercise and discovered my 2 drives are: a) getting the hell away from strong community ties, b) seeking beauty in ugliness.
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9/ People sometimes say I'd have been academic or Dr. Johnson type in another era. That's skills. Only 1 of my what-ifs was even close.
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