Since I was a child, business done by ordinary people has seemed trivial. I thought, all of us can do it, and it is not something to be considered hard. At 43, I still have this view.
But around the age of 16, I developed an appreciation for cultural anthropology. This arose from recognising that communication is hard, and that its hardness is structural, but rarely impermeable. In college, I considered a traditionally academic life, but I found my peers and professors all to be ... insufficiently ivory ... too commercial, perhaps. So, I made a point to practice anthropology by living with them, while attempting to be ... ivory enough ... in my spare time. It was a period which I have always been grateful for. I considered stopping halfway through the program, but decided to finish it for convenience.
Then around 22 I turned my attention to collecting commercial experience, which I viewed as necessary, in order to be credible in such society, even though I did not find such society intrinsically interesting. I lived among them until I was around 39, taking only about a year out of 17 to be uncommerciably academic.
Now, attempting a decade of academia, I am not sure that I do a clever thing. But I am rarely sure that any of the things I do, are clever. TBF mainly they are simply interesting.
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