A classic from the archives: I originally wrote this post in November 2015, after suddenly remembering the day I discovered—much to my surprise—that I was not, in fact, good at everything. Several readers told me at the time that the story helped them rethink their own experiences with failure, talent, and changing direction. I recently unearthed it from my old blog archives and decided to give it another life, with a few small updates to reflect what I have learned since. (Updated August 5, 2026)
The year was 1998. I was 23 years old. I was attending college in Seattle, working toward my second associate degree. I had previously majored in journalism and, as is the norm for me, lost interest in it after several years.
I’ve always been quite fickle with careers, living spaces, hair colors, music, and other random miscellanies. I’ve usually done pretty well with relationships, though, so I guess I can stick with something when it really matters.
Anyway, once the journalism bug worked its way out of my system, I decided what I really loved was ROBOTS.
I still love robots, but I loved them in a different way back then. I wanted to build them. I wanted to program them. I wanted to make them smart, self-aware, and sentient.
And I wanted them to take over the world.
With me as their master, of course. Don’t forget that part.
The concept of evolutionary machines was just beginning to appear in mainstream media. I read an article in Discover magazine that really cemented it for me.
I was going into robotics, and that was that.
So I visited the University of Washington Robotics Lab *swoon* and figured out what I would need to do to get accepted into its robotics program. Then I enrolled at a community college to get my undergraduate credits in order without breaking the bank.
I knew that once I proved how awesome I was at robotics, it would be a cinch to get scholarships and grants to pay for the rest of my education.
I had it all planned out.
It goes without saying that, in order to program a robot—especially if you want to give it the capacity to evolve and “learn”—you need to know something about programming.
I had been doing graphic design and building websites in HTML since 1995, which is not really programming but is often considered the gateway drug to programming. I had also used a little JavaScript, and I picked it all up very quickly on my own with no formal training.
So I figured I would ace my programming classes.
No problem.
I had always picked up new skills quickly, ever since I was a very small child. I had never been bad at anything.
I was always on the honor roll. I won drawing and writing contests and spelling bees. I learned to play music by ear. Anything I had an interest in, I just did it.
I was always average or better.
I had never simply failed at anything.
So I was sure that whatever needed to be done, I would just do it, and that would be that.
Then classes started.
On the first day of my Computer Science 101 class, I sat through the two-hour lecture in a daze. The course used the C++ programming language, which had just been standardized that year and was considered a must-have foundational skill for anyone interested in computer science.
Not only did my brain disappear into a fog of confusion, but my heart also sank into a bog of disillusionment.
I suddenly realized that this was not going to be as easy as I had envisioned.
It was not going to be as fun, either.
It may have been the teaching style more than the actual content, but I left class that day feeling as though computer programming was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
Unfortunately, it was also fairly essential to my larger plan of achieving world domination through robots.
So I went back the next day and did it again.
I thought perhaps it would get easier after the initial shock.
It did not.
I went back again, and we received our first assignment: create a small block of code that would draw a basketball court on the screen.
Rectangles. Lines. Semicircles.
Simple enough, right?
That weekend, I studied the textbook, reviewed all my notes, and coded and coded and coded.
Every time I thought I finally understood it, I ran my program and got…nothing.
Nothing even remotely resembling a basketball court, anyway.
I racked my brain. I pulled my hair out. I cursed the gods.
And still, no basketball court.
I turned in the assignment anyway, hoping for at least partial credit for the code I had managed to get right. Surely some of it had to be correct.
The result was a failing grade.
Because, true to life, if your code does not produce the desired result, it is useless. The whole thing may as well not exist if it does not achieve what it was intended to achieve.
So, yes.
EPIC FAIL.
I’ll remind you that I had never been bad at anything before.
I had certainly never received a grade below a C, and that was in P.E. I was a frail and sickly child.
This failing grade challenged my entire identity.
I was the girl who was good at everything.
At least, everything I wanted to do.
I believed that if you really wanted something, had a sincere interest in it, and truly loved it, that was the key. Everything else would come easily.
Not so.
I’m sure that if I had stayed with it and continued pulling my hair out, I would eventually have understood enough to draw that basketball court.
But the wind had been sucked right out of my sails, and I no longer had the fire to keep going.
So I dropped my computer science classes, changed my major to multimedia design, and did awesome.
I felt much better about myself, but I had to relegate my robotic dreams to creating little cartoon robots in Macromedia Dreamweaver and making them march across the screen.
They would still dominate the world, but it would be a cartoon world entirely of my own making.
And they would still evolve, but it would happen through storytelling rather than highly advanced artificial intelligence.
The moral of the story?
When I originally wrote this, I claimed I had no idea.
I had simply been taking a shower and suddenly remembered the day I discovered I was not good at everything.
But the experience stayed with me because it disrupted several assumptions I had never thought to question.
I had assumed that passion would make a difficult path feel easy.
I had assumed that interest would automatically produce aptitude.
And I had assumed that failure meant something fundamental about who I was.
None of those things turned out to be entirely true.
I still see people say that passion is all you need to succeed at anything you put your mind to.
Perhaps determination can eventually carry someone through almost any learning curve. But that does not mean every possible outcome is worth every possible cost.
In my case, I probably could have learned C++ if I had stayed with it long enough. But it would have required a great deal of time, energy, frustration, and persistence.
The more important question was not whether I could do it.
It was whether I wanted that future badly enough to justify the investment.
At the time, the answer was no.
I chose to redirect my energy toward multimedia design, where I already had stronger abilities, greater curiosity, and a much more natural sense of momentum.
That was not necessarily the only correct choice. It was simply the decision that made the most sense based on what I knew about myself and what I wanted at that point in my life.
So I still believe it is okay to take the easy win sometimes. But I no longer believe that “easy” and “right” are the same thing.
The right work will not always come naturally. It may require sustained effort, deliberate practice, humility, and the willingness to be a beginner.
Some weaknesses are really capability gaps—skills that must be developed because they support something important we are trying to accomplish.
The question is not simply whether something feels difficult. The question is whether becoming better at it meaningfully contributes to the life, work, or future we are trying to build.
Passion matters, but passion alone is not enough.
Skill matters.
Persistence matters.
Learning conditions matter.
Timing matters.
Available resources matter.
And the value of the destination matters.
I still believe that our strengths are often the best place to create exceptional value. It usually takes less effort to build an existing strength into something remarkable than it does to force a weakness into basic competence.
But that does not mean we should avoid every weakness, or walk away whenever something fails to come easily.
It means we should be strategic.
We should understand which capabilities are essential, which ones can be developed, which ones can be supported by other people, and which ones are consuming energy without moving us toward an outcome we genuinely value.
Work does not need to flow effortlessly to be a good fit. But over time, it should make constructive use of who you are.
It should engage enough of your strengths, curiosity, values, and sense of purpose that the effort feels worthwhile.
It should challenge you without requiring you to prove your worth through endless suffering.
It may occasionally drain you. It may frustrate you. It may even give you a nightmare or two.
But chronic misery is not a professional development strategy.
Difficulty is information.
Sometimes it tells you to practice longer.
Sometimes it tells you to seek a better teacher, a different environment, or more support.
Sometimes it reveals an important skill that you need to build.
And sometimes it tells you that you are spending enormous effort on a destination you no longer want badly enough to reach.
The important thing is not to interpret difficulty automatically as either a command to quit or a command to persist.
Examine it.
Understand what it is telling you.
Then make a deliberate choice about where your time, effort, and energy belong.