Whenever I get blood tests, there’s always a chance I’ll faint. Even if no one’s sticking me with a needle, I may hit the floor from even simply hearing talk of medical exams or blood vessels.

I visited a relative in the hospital last year. A doctor came up to me to explain the testing and examinations they were doing. In the middle of our conversation, I began to hear the familiar ringing in my ears, and my vision started to blur over. “Excuse me,” I said to the doctor, and walked down the hospital hallway. I stood in a corner and tried to make the dizziness stop before I fainted.

I can never be a doctor.

 

I have similar issues when I fly. During takeoff and landing, I will turn away from whoever I’m talking to. I will put down the book if I’m reading, or look solidly away from my phone. I may close my eyes. These are all preventative tactics I discovered over the years which stop me from developing motion sickness. On boats, these tactics still don’t work, and I have to take dramamine…which still may not work.

I can never be a flight attendant. Nor can I work on a ship.

There are certain careers that just don’t come naturally. You can always excel at a job if you put your mind to it, but sometimes it may be better to forsake certain vocations that are extremely easy for others but super difficult for you.

Not always, of course. If I really wanted to become a doctor or a flight attendant, I guess I could try to fight my natural sickness. But there are many people who don’t get sick at all from these things. They have a natural advantage.

There are less black and white career choices that cause a lot of confusion. I took a computer science class in college and really enjoyed it. However, I was horrible at programming. I just didn’t have a knack for it. Programs that took me two hours to create took many of my classmates 10 minutes. Sure, I’d eventually make the program work, and maybe I’d get faster if I kept at it, but it wasn’t the natural way my brain worked. I got so extremely frustrated with computer programming that I ended my minor in Computer Science and minored in Psychology instead.  Still, I wish I’d stuck it out longer– computer programming is something I still really want to do.

Then there’s acting. I love acting. I’m good at acting. But right now I don’t want it enough to go through the ‘business of acting’ – to act as a career. Some people will give up anything to be an actor- they’ll sacrifice, they’ll go through rejection after rejection, they’ll surrender time and money for quite awhile. And I admire the heck out of them. And I want to want it. But I just don’t want it enough. Especially not to go through all that. Not now, anyway.

Are you happy with your chosen career path? Or are you in a field or at a job where you feel like you’re fighting your natural instincts every day? I’m not saying it’s never worth the fight. Sometimes it totally is, if you want it bad enough. But pick your battles carefully. Look for the balance between what you’ve always been good at and what you’re willing to sacrifice for. And remember that many tasks which seem simple to you may be the same ones that cause others to faint dead away.