The Risks of Changing, and of not Changing, Careers

In introducing this week’s segment of "Take Two: Life Changes" on NPR’s Morning Edition today, Ketzel Levine gave an update on the subject of a previous segment, 58-year-old Terry Rusinow and her mobile espresso cart, "Duck, Duck, Brew", who is now pursuing a "Plan B" in her entrepreneurial venture(s) — seeking high-volume, half-day events she can espresso-ize rather than continuing her daily installation at the park … bringing to mind Mark Horowitz’ Mobile Coffee Unit.  Ketzel then goes on to tell the story of 24-year-old Brea Evans and her life (and work) during a 6-month stint aboard a fishing boat.   

I have enjoyed all of the stories in this series; today I was particularly inspired by Ketzel’s observation about Terry and others who have been profiled:

She’s gutsy … and that’s a common theme with all our Take Two people. Now I’m not saying they’re not worried or anxious about changing careers.  Many of them have no choice, they’ve lost jobs, they’ve reached dead ends, but at a certain point they all take a risk, even if that risk is simply acknowledging that what they’ve been doing no longer works.

This brought to mind a whole flood of inspirational quotes on risk … I’ll restrict myself to listing only three below:

Don’t be afraid of failure; be afraid of petty success.  – Maude Adams

The biggest risk in life is to risk nothing at all.  – Anonymous

Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are.  – Don Miguel Ruiz