I've read a lot in the last two weeks: parts of six or seven non-fiction books about a variety of topics (herbs, Japanese history, the founding fathers, sewing, building a house, sustainable living, and finding a career), one novel (Happiness Sold Separately by Lolly Winston), the beginning of another novel (Swimming by Joanna Hershon), the local newspaper each morning, and six different magazines (about running, herbs, health, and current events), which brings me to my point. I think I have ADD. Not really - or not any more than any other American. But the thing is, that book I was reading about finding a career - I don't really want a career, by the way - was called the Rennaissance Soul by Barbara Lowenstein. Lowenstein theorizes that a type of person exists called a Renaissance Soul, someone who is not interested in honing life into one steady career or one narrow academic subject. Renaissance souls are dabblers; people who might be branded "jacks of all trades, masters of none;" people who might change their college majors six or seven times or desperately want to leave lucrative jobs to try new things; people who have panic attacks when they think about spending thirty years at one job.

I can definitely relate to that. I've always been well-rounded (as they used to call it in elementary school), good at math and science and reading and writing and art. No teacher ever told me that I should be an artist or a scientist or a mathematician, because no subject really stood out from the others as my "gift." I'm still as likely to want to read about politics as art, history as biology, health as nature. I'm not exactly jealous of those steady career types, although I can see the perks. Some of the lifers I work with in the public sector will be retiring in a few years with fat pensions and benefits. They definitely have stamina that I don't have, the ability to be bored and burned out and still show up and do it again, day after day, and that stamina is (or was once) rewarded in our society. However, I am not exactly envious of those sorts. I think they are supressing their inner Renaissance souls more than they'd like to ponder upon. I'm more envious of people who are academic and directed, people who are willing to narrow all of their interests into one tiny subject and become experts. I know that I will never be an expert in anything, because I'm too curious about everything.