Pivot! Pivot! Pivot! - Until You’re Dizzy.
From the day I began my illustrious middle school basketball career, until my bittersweet retirement from the sport at the age of 18, one skill we were drilled in incessantly was the pivot. If you’ve ever played, you know that whilst it is always preferable, once you gain possession of the ball, to continue dribbling, there will be times, whether due to a case of nerves, lack of concentration, or unfortunate shortage of skill, when you will cease your dribbling, and suddenly find that a defender has taken up residence roughly half-an-inch from your face, and is threatening, in a sweaty, unpleasant way, to take your ball. But that ball is your baby; and like any caring parent, you’re likely against the idea of letting someone steal your baby. So what you’ll want to do in this desperate situation is to pass the ball to one of your four co-parents (also known as teammates) or, if you see an opening, to shoot.
The defender, however, is not about to let you do any of the above without putting up a fierce struggle. To him or her, YOU are the baby thief and he or she the desperate parent. In these moments, the tool you must employ is the pivot. Wheeling about on one sneaker-clad foot, you search for various angles, endeavoring to find a safe path.
I’ll leave the metaphor here, because you get the idea, and are possibly already familiar with the baby-bouncing game of basketball.
But the great thing about the pivot is that it’s a concept sometimes found outside the bounds of the basketball court. In fact, and fans may find this shocking, the word 'pivot' originated in France, back in the 14th century; years before anyone thought to put baskets and balls in any sort of proximity.
As you may know, I myself have recently been endeavoring to execute a pivot of sorts, in my career. After my layoff, I realized that heading back to the office might very well have been frowned upon, and so I’ve been looking about, and attempting to figure out what it is that Jason Kornblatt will be doing for this next phase of his existence.
As I began to ponder this in earnest, it occurred to me that I might want to earn a little cash on the side, to create a stream of income that could continue to flow, were I ever to be laid off again. One way of doing this, a YouTube video convinced me, would be to open an Etsy store, where I could create and sell mugs and T-shirts, with the assistance of A.I. Not only would this enable me to begin learning how to use these increasingly essential tools, but it would allow me to channel my creativity into images like the one above, which actually was on the first mug I put up for sale.
Having been kindly gifted, but having not yet fully read, “The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs,” by Ryan Holiday, I decided that embracing my recent misfortune could potentially pave the way to newer and better fortunes, if, as I suspected, I had correctly understood the book's gist from simply reading its long title. And so, I launched Stuck Tales, a store which has recently seen me become a “star seller” on Etsy.
However, the journey hasn’t been a straightforward one. Although the original intention for my store was to amuse, and help tug, people who felt stuck in the tar pits of their own careers toward a better future, it turned out that not many of them were embracing items like the Job-finding mug that I created specifically to encourage them. Perhaps they've been preoccupied.
Yet, although disinterest in what I have to offer has previously had the power to see me discouraged, I didn’t become so here. This time, ball in hand, I was able to pivot, after noticing that one item people were buying from me was a mug which contained an image of baby otters. Why otters, you ask? Why not, for instance, squirrels? I remain uncertain. Still, I decided, 'let's lean in to otters,' and the pivot proved immediately fruitful.
Of course, I didn’t completely dump stuck professionals from my mission statement. instead, I tried approaching them again, but this time with inspirational otters.
Well, THAT didn't work, and so I'm now feeling the itch to pivot anew. Otters, it seems, may not be the inspirational self-help gurus I took them for. And so, we appear to be at the part of the biopic just a bit before true inspiration hits, forever changing the life of the film's subject. As that presumed subject, I’m not yet sure which pivot will present a path to success, but I do know one thing. When life gives you a soundtrack, there's but one thing you can do. Dance.