Meredith Farkas has a great post about why taking risks can bring great rewards.

For a recent library school graduate like myself, this is very inspiring. I’ve done a lot of volunteering for committees and organizations, which has given me the opportunity to learn from my colleagues and discover new things that I enjoy about this career. In many ways, volunteering was a risk for me, because it meant taking on new tasks or roles with which I was unfamiliar. But in each of these cases, the risk I took was determined by an opportunity that presented itself.

Meredith’s ode-to-risk-taking goes beyond this, incorporating the act of creating an opportunity where none existed. I’ve done this on a small scale before, but never in a life-altering, career-changing way. It brings to mind what Walt Crawford is doing over at his site, where he’s essentially inviting applications from organizations that might be interested in benefiting from his expertise and energy.

I’ve met with a lot of skepticism when I tell people what I want to get out of my career. “A job is a job”, they say. But people like Meredith and Walt remind me that with a good bit of energy, some hard work, and–yes–some risk-taking, it can become much more than that.