Interview questions

Looking back to an interesting weekend with attractive interview questions to a perfumer, one being the question for one’s motivation to do what one does, in a world with launches and re-launches of scents on a daily basis. An answer: To create a fragrance that did not exist before, and share it. Thus, creation and sharing as driving force?
Looking back some 15 years, creating things was one aspect that I also enjoyed when working in the lab, trying to get my PhD done in chemistry, working with bacteria. At some time I was genetically modifying my little Escherichia coli with junks of archaebacterial DNA, thus have them make a particular protein. In a sense I created my own private E. coli, never seen on this world. It feels good to build something new, especially if this something is a living cell. Sharing in this context meant publishing results in a scientific journal. Publishing is like having the flash light turned on, pointing to your results, leading the scientific world to what you have done and reached.
Back then, in the laboratory, the goal was to proof an idea. In that particular case the idea was related to the evolution of all species, via a common ancestor which used RNA instead of DNA to store information on how to build its proteins.

Coming back to the interview… maybe this is another motivation. To simply proof oneself that a vision can become reality, that one can do it?
Well yesterday, while thinking about these and other questions, I proofed to myself that I can do 200 samples between jogging and cooking dinner, that’s already something, isn’t it?