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Comment by bschne | Hacker News Reader

This reminded me of this guy I was friends with starting in kindergarten, really smart kid, everyone kind of thought he would go on to study physics or something. Then sometime around 14 or so he started juggling and got so obsessed he would constantly practice during every break and even on the train to/from school. I think he's working as a circus artist now? Always kind of fascinated how you could get so absorbed in a topic, especially given my own propensity for rapidly cycling interests.

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Heh, to some extent, this is what I did. School was easy (low standard of eduction), school life was boring (team sports or nothing), so I found something that interested me. I learned to juggle, amongst other things. Got decent, then learned to perform.

I performed most friday and saturday night in late highschool, assorted gigs I got through contacts or from audience members. Graduated school, worked long enough to build some savings and buy a flight to Europe, and hit the road with a backpack.

I stuck with it on my return for a while, but ended up leaving it for 'normal' career.

Funny thing is, Anthony Gatto was brought up in a circus family and went on to become the world's best technical juggler (based on endurance at high numbers, incredibly difficult technical tricks, and overall consistency rather than just a few one-off record attempts), but eventually got bored of juggling and decided to quit and start a business doing concrete countertop installation.

I did a bunch of juggling in college, and several of my friends went on to do circus arts professionally. Generally they went into more acrobatics oriented arts than juggling; seems like juggling itself is not quite as interesting to audiences as it is to the jugglers.

I remember learning about Gattos shift of career. He was someone me and my friends would watch with admiration. When we learned he'd stopped, we were disappointed, but didn't question it.

I don't question any career change (done it 4 times myself) but I do find it interesting when someone moves from working with their passion (and you have to be passionate to get world-class at anything) to what is almost certainly just a paycheck gig.

I mean, he could be passionate about concrete benchtops, but what are the chances?

Your passion can also be soul destroying, or body destroying. Friends who have left the industry often site career-ending injuries, or that they were on track for a permanent disability.

Oh, and to tour other point, I noticed a gap between juggling and juggling performance. There's an article elsewhere in this post on Gatto, that sums up quite well how audience perception of difficulty is quite limited. This impacts a juggling performance severely, but has no impact on someone who likes to juggle. I suppose the same could be said of a lot of things though, without a technical eye, a lot of Olympic competitions are impressive, but I can't tell good from better.

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