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Comment by Prcmaker | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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