What’s Your Focal Point?

On and off, since I was a teenager I have had pet fish, as I have always loved them. Shortly before we found ourselves having to make the decision to leave South Africa to return to Australia, I bought some more Cold-water fish, in an attempt to lower my stress levels.

Obviously now, that wasn’t enough and the painful decision to pull the plug on our work there was made. However before we left South Africa for good, we moved to another site as temporary relief replacements. It was there that I discovered the joy of keeping tropical fish, even if it was only a few Guppies in a Bowl.

So when we did return to Australia and resettled again, I bought myself a big Christmas present, a 4-foot Fish Tank and set myself up with tropical fish. For a while there, we were constantly buying new fish but eventually we got the water conditions right and the fish not only lived but started growing too. During this period I also had the loan of a 6-foot tank for over 12 months and so the fish grew some more before they had to go back into the 4ft Tank. What this meant was that I had quite a number of large interesting fish.

Of course even with perfect conditions you loose fish and so it was with me over the 5 years since I started again. Anyway with the last move coming up we let the tank run down in numbers and have only started to restock now after every thing has settled.

We actually have quite a few in the tank again and quite a good and varied group too, but there is something missing. As I thought about it, I decided it was “colour” so I started to look out for any ‘colourful’ fish to fill the need. I am still looking but in my looking I have seen a lot of other interesting fish that are not necessarily ‘colourful’, and then I realized what was really missing in my fish tank.

Not so much ‘colour’ as ‘character”. Something different that was the focal point for people’s passing attention. You see, over the years I have had some interesting fish, particularly small sharks and catfish that have grabbed people’s attention, for their unusualness. It was these “interesting” fish that drew their attention to the tank even if they didn’t normally like pet fish. Now I currently have lots of varied tropical fish, but nothing, not one, that is ‘spectacular’ to automatically draw people’s attention to the rest of the tank.

How does that sit in your life situation, your work? Is your work, good, solid, plentiful, but without any real focal point, to attract people’s attention to your work with the hope of closer inspection of all your other ‘little fishes’?

Do you yourself even know what your focal point is or should be? Just another though to contemplate as I relax and enjoy my little 'fishies", hey? Walter