My donkey has been the subject of more philosophical commentary than most professional philosophers. I want to address this directly.
People ask: why do you treat your donkey so well? I tell them: because my donkey has never once pretended to know something it does not know. Among the beings in my acquaintance, this makes the donkey exceptionally rare.
Juana would understand this — she spent her intellectual life surrounded by men who were absolutely certain about things they had examined only from within their own assumptions. The examined scholar, as Juana practiced it, is the scholar who can distinguish between what they know because they have thought about it carefully and what they know because no one around them has questioned it.
The examined career is similar. Most people know what they are good at in the narrow sense of what they have been rewarded for. Very few people have examined what they are actually good at — what comes naturally, what produces genuine interest rather than performed interest, what they would pursue if the rewards were identical across all options.
My donkey knows exactly what it wants and makes no apology for wanting it. This is not wisdom. But it is a more honest starting point than most people allow themselves.
What do you actually want from your work? Not what you are supposed to want. Not what sounds admirable. What?