The story behind the glory

Hello. My name is Mildred Achoch. I am a full-time, freelance writer.

I love my job. Not many Kenyans can say that. Over fifty percent of my compatriots live below the poverty line. For them, a job is not an avenue for self-actualization; it is the avenue to survival.

Two factors allowed me to totally disregard survival in favour of self-actualization. First, I am blessed with a caring and relatively well-off family, family here including the extended family and ‘well-off’ meaning that we have never gone to bed hungry. Oh there were some close calls but thankfully, things never got to be very bad.

The second factor is that I am an INFP.

Family and an INFP personality played a key role in my turbulent path towards my dream job. For over five years, I have kept under lock and key my struggles as an aspiring writer in a developing country; a developing country that is full of people who view writing as a hobby, not a career. Today, I share with you an (edited) excerpt from my journal that details the story behind the glory of being a writer.

Look out for INFP-related words such as 'feelings' and 'depression'. And yes, there is a touch of melodrama! So come, take a peek into my past.

Site news.... and processing serious mixed feelings

First of all, the open call for blog authors is still in effect. I've invited our first author besides me, also an INFP, and I'm eager to read what she writes -- in particular, to learn about career issues in her part of the world, and how they're different from here in the US. So that's what's coming up soon.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to write here, just post a comment and I'll set you up.

Now to those mixed feelings. I'm still very excited about the degree of autonomy that my day job is offering me, enough to feel night-and-day much happier than I was a couple of months ago. I even moved!

But I still have a consciousness that coding all day just isn't my calling. It's a lot more manageable because I'm only doing it 30 hours a week and I can take more frequent breaks or arrange my day how I wish. But it's still like... well, I'm not sure how to describe it. I can make myself focus for certain periods of time (maybe 2-4 hours, tops) and solve a technical problem that needs to be solved, but it requires a Herculean effort to stay on task. It's satisfying when I grind it out, but only in the sense that running several miles might feel satisfying when you're done with it.

I'm also getting a little antsy wrapping up a task, because I feel like my boss really doesn't even know what I'm doing in the day-to-day. He wants to see daily deliverables, which would be fine, except I'm not sure he really understands when the task calls for some sort of research and troubleshooting that doesn't show up on a nice neat Web page. To be honest I'm not really sure how much he understands about technical management.

I dunno, I still think I'm in the wrong career. Fortunately all that work done to choose a new one isn't for naught, as I'll be able to start putting together grad school apps around August-September.

The poker's going quite well, incidentally. I'm playing about 15-20 hours a week and winning at a rate that would be pretty good for a temp job. I'm not yet ready to take the plunge into playing full-time because I like having insurance paid for, I like not worrying that a week or two of downswing will sap my motivation to play, and I like knowing that I have some experience to put on the resume. But if something were to happen to my day job, or if I wanted to leave to take a contract job here where I'm living, it would be nice to have my poker bankroll pretty stable and being built up week by week.

Is grad school really outdated?

Penelope Trunk seems to think so. I'll need to do some processing here, but I wonder how much applies to me. For one thing, if I want to start working for a college, then I think it is far more of a credentials-oriented world than her very valid points about succeeding in business without an MBA.

However, a lot of the points resonate, especially the part about committing to a career for the long term without knowing what career you want to commit to. Unfortunately, I don't think that many employers see the world as she does. They think pretending to commit to a career for life is a very good thing, even though we all realize that's sort of a farce.

This blog isn't dead, but...

I do need to think about about its purpose.

Look, let's face it. Writing is therapeutic for me. When I'm really frustrated about a certain topic, when I have a lot to say, then blogging about it is easy. I started this blog to write about my struggles as an ADHD adult in the workplace in the hope, possibly a hopelessly naive hope but nevertheless a well-intentioned one, that others facing similar struggles might stumble upon it and relate to it.

My career issues are far from resolved in any permanent way, but things have taken some turns for the better. I really do thank God for that. But that doesn't mean that the broader issues of how people like me make a living are any less critical to discuss. It just means that I feel less sense of personal urgency to discuss them. I know that the issues that have led me to feel so ill-suited to the working world are still out there, in part because I know of people who've been victimized by the same rigidity from the same specific actors that I've miraculously found a way to cope with.

I hope to recruit other guest bloggers or permanent contributors who share my interest in discussing square pegs fitting into vocational round holes. The less I make Dynamo in a Box my own "Dear Diary" where I turn only when I feel bummed out about work, the more value it will have to others, I imagine.

See, that's my curse, to be both MBTI intuitive and to be an incorrigible empath. So I not only care about the big picture, but I care about the fact that the big picture makes lots of people desperately unhappy. I'm glad my personal situation is fixed, at least until 2009, the first date I can realistically enroll in grad school. But it still makes me really sad that change comes so slowly in the macro, that there are probably 1000 employers in the US every day harassing people who broadly speaking share my personality traits.

So I'll promise to keep this blog going if you'll promise to help me out. You can do this by commenting to let me know you read. Nothing intelligent is required -- just let me know you're reading. It motivates me to work harder to hunt down quality content rather than to be satisfied with my own navel-gazing. Of course if you have any other specific suggestions, I appreciate the feedback.

And of course, if you want to contribute more publicly to this discussion, I'd love to have you write here.

It's true: Boring work really does dull your brain

See this AFP piece: Dull Tasks Numb the Brain, Literally

Not sure what the practical implication is, except that maybe I'm right to believe that I'm right to flee boredom at work rather than wishing beyond hope I could embrace it.

O joyous day!

I had a great day today. I finally worked up the courage to approach my boss -- well, finally worked up the courage on a day he was there! -- about going part time and working off-site. It sounds like this is really going to be doable. So I'm awfully enthused about that and thanking God that it looks like things may work out for me to stay sane without having to leave the job just yet.

Maelstrom

It's been a really strange week, with a mix of eager anticipation about finally shaking up my routine and paralyzing fear about shaking up my routine. I was hoping to talk to my boss about an idea I had, but.... well, here's what I posted on a message board:

*sigh*

I'm about to try to bring this to a positive resolution by approaching my boss about going part time and off-site. I think that will address most of the frustration that I feel from working here and free up a good deal of time (and loosen some geographical constraints!) so I can do more things I want to do.

However, I'm a little scared of this conversation too, even though I'm emotionally prepared to accept the outcome all the way up to getting terminated. So it's taken some emotional effort to prepare for this conversation....

TWICE so far this week! And my boss still hasn't shown up in the office! Grrrr. How can I get this stressful conversation behind me if I can't even find him? Perhaps I should just send a resignation email. Arrgh.

So that's what's adding most of the stress in my life. I totally forgot to show up for a shrink appointment on Monday despite four Google Calendar email reminders! I was so wound up thinking I might have that conversation on Monday, and then so relieved when it didn't happen.

Last night I happened to make a sarcastic comment to my Mom to the effect that, "Of course God wants us all to be miserable for a few decades then die." At least I think it was sarcastic. My point was that society acts like we have a moral imperative to just keep clawing away at something we hate, in my case in a town I despise, and that for us INFP types that's just bad advice. But it still comes wrapped up in all sorts of normative statements from well-meaning but wrong-headed ESTJs.

Mom replied something about how I need to be more grateful for what I have, which is probably true but still set me off as a total invalidation of my self-expression. At that point all hell broke loose and I just reacted out of anger. I'm not proud that I treat people like that but it still gives me a lot to think about. Is my problem that I don't wake up every day all happy-go-lucky about a job that sometimes feels like torture (not lately, mercifully)? Does being thankful for life mean that I have to just suck it up and pretend to like where I'm living? Apparently, to people who think like Mom, it does.

I was just born ill-adapted to the human race, and that's all there is to it.