Dinner convo

[gsh]

So, I was having dinner with mtnwlf and reedrover and we were discusing someone who apparently doesn't have a lot of ambition, and I said that I wasn't the ambitious type, and got stared at like I had two heads and three arms, a la Zaphod Beeblebrox. Since there was obviously a disconnect in what I thought my ambition level was, and what other people thought, I figured why not, a poll!

[Poll #884082]

Comments

[a-treitell.livejournal.com]

I don't know you, well, really, at all "for real" BUT... One tends not to end up working in a field that takes additional education and brains by being a slacker.. And I know that not all astronomer types get access to Arecibo.

Soooo..

[gsh]

But I've never been to Arecibo. :)

[a-treitell.livejournal.com]

weren't you down there a few months ago? Or am I smoking crack (This seems to happen occasionally with my memory since I've had the baby, I make shit up apparently but am firmly convinced it's true.)

[gsh]

I was at Cerro Tololo observatory in Chile, or Lick Observatroy in Chile.

[a-treitell.livejournal.com]

heh, okay, welll.. uhmm.. yeah.. so.. uhmm.. heh..

*insert self-deprecating bad anthropologist damned americans with crummy geography mommy-brain comment here*

;)

[gsh]

Lick is actually in California, so don't beat yourself up *too* bad.

[a-treitell.livejournal.com]

No, I'm just mad at myself for mixing up Chile and Puerto Rico, and the worst is that now that you SAY it, I remember that we've had this conversation before.

*sigh*

[beaq.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's anything wrong with not being particularly ambitious, if you're happy with whatever comes along, or if you have brief enthusiasms that you follow to a natural conclusion. Fear of change, and a reflexive refusal to do anything new, I would call anti-ambitious, rather than unambitious. Success, financial or otherwise, doesn't denote ambition, in my mind. You can sit around moping about how the universe treats you, and through a combination of natural facility, luck in circumstance, willingness to work, and willingness to believe one deserves fairly large rewards for that work, can happen into a substantial living. I don't think that's ambitious, though it's not anti-ambitious, either. Ambition in that case, IMO, would be a desire and willingness to do something bigger with what's being handed to you. A person with few resources can be very ambitious, yet their dreams can look puny compared to the dreams of someone well-placed to achieve their own next level. I don't know if it's something that can be judged well from afar.