What Did You Love To Do When You Were a Kid?

I was just watching a video on youtube, conducted by Gilt.com, with Gerard Yosca. I chose to watch it because one of my clients wants me to write a few hundred words of introduction to good old Gerard for her own interview with him. 


Something struck me toward the end of the video. The interviewer asks him "how it all started." And he goes into a beautifully succinct description of his major moments that led him to where he is. From the time he was little he loved to craft. It all started making pom-pom pets and selling them for 10 cents at his Dad's butcher shop. Then he went to Parson's school of design with the intent to study advertising, but it wasn't creative enough. Then he decided to study fashion, but didn't want to learn how to sew and drape and every outfit he sketched had a belt with it. So, he decided to try and make a belt. And he did. Eventually he became a very well-known, very successful jewelry designer, which is why people who have sites that sell jewelry clamor to interview him. At the end of his little speech he says that jewelry-making is going back to what he loved to do as a kid, which is to "make things". 


There are a couple of points about this that stuck out to me and I have always suspected are keys to a happy, successful working life. 1.) you've got to break some eggs. Your path to self-discovery and your true passion often comes in one ah-ha! moment that takes years to build up. Those years often include going down paths a little distance, realizing it's not for you and then turning around. 2.) We're born with a predilection for loving to do something. If we can recall what that is, we might be on a solid path toward what will make us happy as adults. Einstein's life turned around as a child when a family friend brought him a book about science and he fell in love. 


Not to bore anyone with my story, but in the vein of Gerard Yosca, it goes something like this: Little girl loves being read to. Though, she doesn't yet know how to read, she scribbles on pieces of paper, pretending that she's writing. Once she learns the alphabet she makes her parents buy her the sparkliest, pinkest-covered spiral bound notebooks at the drug store and with each one intends to write a novel, she's about 8. Life happens. Writing isn't practical, she tries to forget about it. Plus she never finished any of her novels anyway. At 15 it crops up and she accidentally starts writing poems. Then she stops. Aged 21, on a trip to Paris, she has a self-discovery that she's a writer. She tucks it away and knows it's true even if she never writes anything. At 24 it crops up again and she offers to write on a fashion blog b/c she loves clothes too. Goes to Business school, finishes with no clue what to do with herself. Moves back to Michigan from New York as a freelance writer. And somewhere along the way had an ah-ha! moment; it made perfect sense because this is what she loved to do, even before she knew how. 


Over the years, she went down several different employment roads, and decided never to work in a stuffy office again helping someone else make money off their widgets. Is confident she's on the right track and that someday, will have a life as fabulous as Gerard's. But for now, can be compared to him being broke, making his own jewelry in his kitchen as a 20-something with a dream.