Memory 1: I was a contractor supporting a government office in Florida. The government rep overseeing the work had been shipped out of the headquarters to this remote site – meaning her career was stuck. The first time I walked into her office, I noticed stacks of paperback novels about two feet tall lined up across the back wall of her office. She had nothing to do but checkoff on our work and sit in her office reading romance novels.

Memory 2: Different job. I went over to a coworker’s house for lunch. We were both making minimum wage, so neither of us lived anywhere fancy. But the house was filled with hundreds of romance novels that his wife had read.

Seeing this voracious consumption of books, I should have registered “opportunity”. But I was blind to what other people liked, because I only read science fiction. If the stacks had been science fiction, I would have been excited, impressed, and searching the titles for something to borrow.