Niches

One of the most common appeals of the self-development movement is "to find our niche".

If we can find that place where we belong, all will fall into place, and all good things will come to pass. If we can get the proper qualification, find the right business, meet the right people, we can become entrepreneurs, and our path to success lights up before us.

It's a great sell - describe something attractive and intangible, a distance from where we are, convince people we know the way and charge for the journey.

I find there's one major challenge, in that to carve out a niche, there has to be something solid out of which to carve it. Fluids don't have niches, and the situation we find ourselves in is most definitely fluid. Niches are eddies that disappear in a swirl before our eyes.

What do we do when there are no niches?

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Theodore Roosevelt

When Roosevelt said this (he attributed the quote to Squire Bill Widener), it was another very fluid time…