Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Dreaming big

Today in a staff meeting my boss was talking about some conference he went to, about rubbing shoulders with some sort of entrepreneurs or something. It reminded me once again how frustrating careers are to me.

From early on, when society decided to brand me "smart" or gifted or a high academic achiever or whatever, I've always felt that I'd been given a gift by God. Therefore I've always wanted to use it responsibly for whatever "big purpose" God intended.

You'd think by now life experience would have taught me the folly of looking for such bigness, that knowing three or four people enough to really influence the course of their lives is really the biggest thing one can aspire to. But that just seems so.... hard to pin down.

I can't escape the feeling that I'm just frittering my life away. I'm 35, really middle-aged now, and I haven't accomplished a damn thing yet. (Well, at least I'm not miserable in my day-to-day any longer.)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

The "P" in INFP stands for "Perfection"

Until very recently, when I came across Robert Kiyosaki’s "Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant", I was completely content with my career. As a freelance writer, I am my own boss. I don’t have to deal with daily traffic jams, rigid working hours and psychotic bosses.

So imagine my surprise when I read similar words in Kiyosaki’s book. He writes that the self-employed are: "People who want to ‘Be their own boss.’ Or they like to: ‘Do their own thing.’ I call this group the ‘do-it-yourselfers.’" I must admit, this is a very accurate description of me!

I was rather disturbed when I read that Kiyosaki thinks we in the "S" (Self-employed) quadrant are governed by fear, just like the people in the "E" (Employee) quadrant. He writes: "So while the 'E' or employee often will respond to the fear of not having money by seeking "security", the 'S' often will respond...not by seeking security, but by taking control of the situation and doing it on their own." Aaaaah yes. Control. Incidentally, Personalitypages.com says this about INFPs: "In group situations, they may have a 'control' problem."

Personalitypages.com also says that the INFPs "have very high standards and are perfectionists." Kiyosaki writes: "Self-employed people are often hard-core 'perfectionists'. They often want to do something exceptionally well." Kiyosaki goes on to say that "In their mind, they do not think anyone else does it better than they can do it, so they really do not trust anyone else to do it the way they like it...the way they think is the ‘right way’". Personalitypages.com says INFPs "may have problems working on a project in a group, because their standards are likely to be higher than other members of the group."

So what is so bad about being in the "E" or "S" quadrant? Kiyosaki gives us the answer: "Most of us have heard that the secrets to great riches and wealth are 1)OPT – Other People’s Time 2) OPM – Other People’s Money. OPT and OPM are found in the right side of the quadrant." This right side of the quadrant is occupied by B (business owners) and I (investors). Kiyosaki goes on to say that "For the most part, people who work in the left side of the Quadrant are the OP (Other People) whose time and money are being used." Ouch and double ouch!!!

Kiyosaki gives a very good reason why I, as someone in the "S" quadrant, should be seriously thinking of moving into the "B" and "I" quadrants: "One of the drawbacks of being a successful "S" is that success simply means more hard work...good work results in more hard work and longer hours."

Hmmmm...food for thought. In order to move to the B and I quadrants, I need to get rid of my perfectionist tendencies. After all, no one’s perfect. Not even me.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

We got links, oh yeah

Lately I've come upon a few sites or items that are more or less related to the subject matter of this site and that I think are worth sharing here.

The greatest discovery by far is The Daily WTF. Perhaps it's just that misery loves company, but I find it therapeutic to read about other dysfunctional projects and organizations. Morever, from hearing enough of these stories I start to think in terms of antipatterns, and from there to have a clearer idea how to tell what sorts of work environments I'd like to avoid. Familiarity with the antipatterns would also be helpful to managing one's own organization, but I don't expect ever to be in a position to manage anything other than myself. Still, I wish all those "pointy-haired bosses" out there would read sites like the Daily WTF, although almost without fail they lack the humility to do anything other than chuckle that their shop doesn't run like that.

I should warn that some but not all the posts require some technical expertise to get the "WTF". Even without the ones with code examples, hopefully that site keep you amused for hours on end like it does for me.

What led me to the WTF was a mention in the comments on this thread on Skills vs. Aptitude at Kevin Drum's Political Animal. Some of the comments on that thread's pretty interesting; so's the underlying post on Naked Capitalism about downsized financial workers struggling to make ends meet.

And of course this part got my attention:


Bond salesmen and traders are trying everything from bartending to real-estate sales to make insurance and tuition payments for their families, Maloney said.

``I know a few guys that started gambling, playing poker to pay the bills,'' he said. ``Especially ex-traders.''

So that's why the $1-3 no-limit games are tougher these days.

As to the issue of transferable skills, I've always thought that the managers and organizations who value them most are the ones with the self-confidence not to worry that some hire will be unfairly judged "wrong" leading to the manager getting swept out the door too. In other words, it's a lot easier to CYA if you can point to a failed six-month search for an candidate whose resume exactly matches the list of 74 keywords you put in the job description. But good companies know that smart people can learn a variety of subject matter.

Maybe one day I'll work for a good company.

I have some more links about management and hiring that are interesting to me, but I think I'll share them at a later time.

Monday, August 11, 2008

The "N" in INFP stands for Navel-gazing! :-)

I found...the tone of your writings too self-centered” wrote Tom of Dare2Believe. Well, Tom of Dare2Believe, welcome to an INFP’s world!


According to Personality Page (www.personalitypage.com/INFP.html) , an INFP’s primary mode of living is “focused internally.” We deal with things according to how WE feel about them, or how they fit into OUR personal value system. Our primary goal is to find out OUR meaning in life, OUR purpose and how WE can best serve humanity in our lives. So yes, we INFPs are rather self-absorbed. :-)


My answer to the question “What content here would be most helpful to fellow INFPs and other assorted career-misfits?” is: content that encourages us to navel-gaze some more!

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Getting away from navel-gazing

A few weeks ago in a thread on GlobalChatter I asked for some INFP-oriented feedback about this blog. It's a little disappointing that only one person, the thread-starter, actually jumped in. However, that feedback that Tom of Dare2Believe provided was very valuable:

I found... the tone of your writings too self-centered.

Unsure if people care about our lives enough to invest in frequent trips to a blog to read more. I think blogs need to be about the reader, not the writer.
This is great advice, and I've been vaguely aware that this site's archive reads
like a whining session. So Tom's comments were great to actually propel me to action and force me to come to terms with something I knew to be true.

Now, it's easiest to write about one's own experiences, but that doesn't mean it's most beneficial. At times it may be beneficial, when my experience connects to broader themes and patterns that may apply to others. But it's still good to have other sources of content too.

So I'd like to throw open the question: What content here would be most helpful to fellow INFPs and other assorted career-misfits?

One simple way to get going is to stay up to date on other career-oriented blogs, big ones, and perhaps adapt the concepts there to our specific needs as INFPs/etc. I've already quoted from Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist a couple of times, because she writes some good stuff. But it's dangerous to treat any such advice as one-size-fits-all.

In Five signs that your career is about to get vapid she makes some really good points, and some others that in my mind require a little adaptation:

  1. The generalist/specialist topic is a great one. We INFPs/etc. have a tendency to have a lot of interests, and that makes it hard to specialize on any one for any length of time. I think having lots of interests is fine, but specialization is valuable too. For example, back when I was subcontracting, I got stuck on a project that the guy I was subcontracting for never should have picked up, involving a technology none of us knew. We ended up hiring a consultant who gets $100 or more to work with this system. So when you need his expertise, you really need it, and are presumably willing to pay for it.

    So specialization is great. So what's the INFP to do? Well, you can specialize but still develop a diverse, composite career. First of all, as Trunk points out, finding your specialty means trying out a lot of diverse things:
    Usually you will pick wrong. So what? Keep trying. When I was trying to figure out what I was great at, I wrote a lame novel, I pitched stupid articles to Marie Claire and I got dumped as a feature writer for an alternative Weekly. This is how I learned that I should be writing career advice.
    Moreover, it seems to me that you can have a composite career, working on two or three projects at once, but still have each of those advancing your niche in the specific field. For example, I can play poker 20 hours a week, specializing in learning how to beat live $2-5 no-limit hold 'em, but also write code for 30 hours a week, specializing in using PHP frameworks to develop more efficiently for the Web.
  2. Book deal.... hmmm. We tend to like to write, but I agree that this shouldn't be all-consuming and I agree that sharing your ideas on a blog is more valuable. Is aiming for a book deal still a common temptation?
  3. This one's a little tricky. Like many INFPs I believe pursuing a romantic relationship just to have one is idiotic. So I've tended to have fewer of these than most people my age. Nevertheless, she makes a good point about "looking at yourself through someone else’s eyes." But I think we tend to be empathetic and hypersensitive so we can probably accomplish that through friendships or other relationships more easily than most.
  4. Do any INFPs/etc. lack strong opinions? My problem is finding situations where I don't have strong opinions, where I can keep my mouth shut and say, "Yes, boss!" and not care that what I'm doing is totally unengaging.
  5. Well, I don't know if many of us think career advice is stupid. We definitely should be MBTI intuitive, which means we don't make career decisions in isolation but try to plan them out to aim for a positive pattern. Therefore, a particular piece of career advice may be good, bad, or indifferent; but the process of planning one's career is certainly an important one to INFPs. Presumably if you're reading these words, you see value in thinking about career stuff.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

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.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

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.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

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.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

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.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

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.

Friday, April 18, 2008

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.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

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.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Interesting new development

Apparently the boss knows I'm looking to get out. Hmm....

Career counseling VII: It's time

I had my seventh career counseling session yesterday, and this one went 45 minutes. I had several successful informational interviews to report on, but by my request we also spent some time talking about my plans to transition out of my day job. At this point I'm emotionally committed to leaving pretty soon, most likely end of May. I'm open to continuing to work on a contract basis if I can move and report in remotely or come back to this town for the occasional meeting. But I don't want to live here, and this job is hardly enough to keep me here. In a change from a couple of months ago, Debbie didn't really question the rationality of my decision to move on. I mentioned that I feel much better now that I have a long-term career plan, that going to grad school for student affairs doesn't really require that I tough it out to fabricate resume continuity. She seemed to agree.

Speaking of the present job, we're really still just rearranging deck chairs on the site that I work on. It's blatantly obvious that this site occupies very little of my boss's attention, and I get the sense that he doesn't much care whether it succeeds or fails. On Monday several of us are going to float some ideas that we think would build up traffic -- hiring a professional blogger to write content is the biggest of these ideas. I don't know whether those ideas will be accepted or not, but I see this as sort of a "last gasp" attempt to make meaningful change in this job. You may not be able to imagine how frustrating it is to have a fairly clear idea what needs to be done to make my project a success, yet see time wasted on relative trivia that does nothing to drive traffic to our site. If the meeting next Monday doesn't go well then I'll pretty much take a knee and run out the clock.

To be honest, I'm probably going to move on anyway, even if things do go well. There might I don't like this town much at all, and I want to give the "poker pro" thing a shot for several months before starting grad school. I could play online but I don't like it nearly as much, so I need to live somewhere near casinos that offer poker. As I said, I'll keep this company as a freelancing client if they're interested. One of my colleagues had that arrangement for a time, but I don't know how disposed they would be to let me do the same. And I really don't want to do it full-time, regardless.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Falling into place

Things are sorta looking up as of Monday, for a couple of reasons. Keep in mind that I'm INFP with an emphasis on the N, intuitive, obsession with how everything fits in the broader context. So the big reason is that, after a bit more of this informational interviewing, I'm finally starting to see the patterns that unify the baffling gamut of degrees that I could be pursuing.

In short, pretty much all the people I've talked to so far have said that to become a college career "coach" (some places are deprecating the use of the term counselor, since that sounds like it refers to more holistic psychological effort) you probably need a masters, but it can be highly flexible what discipline it's in. Some people in the field have counseling degrees, but it's a little superfluous since they refer people to somewhere else on campus for real "counseling", i.e. to address deeper issues.

So in summary, I'm getting a much clearer idea of what I want to study -- probably student affairs, which goes by a million different names but has this helpful directory. Although counseling is still a viable alternative, and arguably a more versatile one, I don't see the point of pursuing a more expensive degree that takes longer to complete when people tell me it's less applicable to the field I want to go into!

One other unrelated pattern that's a little funny: So far I've called a couple of in-state colleges' career offices, in addition to my own alma mater's, to ask for an informational interview by phone. In both cases the person taking the call has played "gatekeeper" and tried to explain that they can only offer services to students and maybe alumni. And in both cases I've somewhat assertive explained that I'm just asking for a professional courtesy -- today I pointed out that I'd be delighted to do the same for anyone wanting to become a software developer who asked for 10 minutes of my time! -- and eventually gotten through to the real staff. And here's the great part: In both cases, once I got to someone fairly senior, they were delighted to help me learn more about their field. Successful people usually like to talk about their own careers.

I said things are looking up for a couple of reasons, and the informational interviewing is by far the most important one. But I also applied for a contract job in a larger city nearby, one that would make me much happier to live in, and will be going to visit the agency in a couple of weeks to interview with them. I know that tech recruiters are a weird breed, dogging you for days upon days to convince you that you need to rearrange your schedule to go interview with their client, and then not bothering to call you for weeks to let you know when the client turns you down. Arrrgh. Like piranhas. But it still feels good to have somebody treat you like you're valuable, no matter how contrived.

Finally a minor tech note: I screwed up the header, ironically enough, trying to remove the "box" (border) around it. I'll fix it soon when I'm not lazy but that's why it looks like crap.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

It's back

That same depressing ennui has returned. My mind is just so understimulated right now. I feel like I'm just voraciousy running around the Internet looking for something, anything, some bit of novelty to hold my interest for 15 seconds and get me that much closer to the end of the day. It's awful.

I am trying very hard to make progress on the informational interviews. It's a little hard, though, because I feel so burned out by 3:00 pm that the last thing I feel like doing is chatting with someone during my breaks. But it's really my only hope for a ticket out of this hell so I'm trying to be good about it.

Why won't my counselor let me just quit? I have five figures saved up in my rainy day fund / poker bankroll now. Probably not enough though. You can never have enough. You must continue pursuing more until you die. That's why you're human, ADHD, and INFP, so you can fucking be miserable until you die.

To reward you for reading this nonsense, here's a cool link someone posted on GlobalChatter, a list of different people's self-assessed job satisfaction by type (although it seems to know I'm INFP and give me only those, hmmm): http://www.typeandculture.com/typeresearch/ .

Monday, March 24, 2008

Career counseling VI: Holding pattern

I'm only now writing about my career counseling session last week because I was out of town for a long weekend.

I've been trying to do informational interviews with college career counselors, but so far it's been slow going. Granted that this is partially because I haven't felt really motivated in the past two weeks, but it's also been because of some hiccups along the way. One woman from my college's alumni network never replied to my two emails; another had just had a baby and pointed me to a professional association instead of talking directly to me. I gained a little bit of information by calling the graduate admissions department at Peabody (Vanderbilt), so I learned what the best particular options would be there. But in general I still have a lot of work to do.

Therefore my conversation with Debbie was only 15 minutes, enough for me to report to her and promise to make more progress these next few weeks. Actually I asked for 3 weeks before the next session to give me enough time for my research.

Heh, I really just want to go play poker all day for a living and forget this tough stuff. :)

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The value of meeting other INFPs

As I mentioned last week I need to blog here more when I'm not desperately unhappy. Actually, having a blog as an imaginary friend to help you cope is probably healthy, if a little scary when I put it in those terms. But I'd like this to be more, something more generally interesting.

I want to share more good resources for INFPs. So far the one I've used most frequently is a really excellent Facebook group called INFP's Unite! It's really been remarkable to meet so many people who see the world the same way I do. I joke that it's the first time I've been on a message board where I wasn't the one making the long and involved posts. And I'm about to get into a verbal sparring match with a communist who feels my brainstorming about the idea of a company run by INFPs is "repulsive". What fun!

There's a pretty active INFP message board at Global Chatter: http://infp.globalchatter.com/messageboard/ . As far as I can tell, that site sets a cookie when you first visit to make it really hard to view any message boards other than your own type, so perhaps you should visit your own type if you're not INFP! But I haven't gotten involved there yet because I can imagine how much time I would spend.

I joined the mailing list at http://list.ambertides.org/listinfo.cgi/infp-ambertides.org , but then it frustrated me because the subject lines of the posts aren't marked. I really just need to set up a proper Google filter for those posts but I'm lazy.

Meeting other INFPs has been incredibly helpful to me. Actually it turns out one of my Web freelancing contacts is also INFP -- he announced this by asking, "Do the letters INFP mean anything to you?" which gave me a chuckle -- so we had a good talk about career stuff after that.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Career counseling session.... err, V: Winnowing

Yesterday was my fifth phone conversation with Debbie my career counselor. I would have previously labeled this session 4B, meaning that it was the second half-hour piece of the fourth hour out of the six that I've paid for. However, we only went for 15-20 minutes before she assigned some work for next time and ended the meeting, in essence declaring it a success. So I guess I'll go back to just counting the sessions normally, using Roman numerals to signify this switch. I'll also try to track where I stand in the six hours of meeting time; this session was from 3:30 to 3:50.

We were able to finish early because of four words I uttered, words that don't come easily but are always sincere: "I'm ready to commit."

My last several tasks have been about narrowing down this immense list of careers that I think I would enjoy. It's plainly impossible to pursue everything, or even a good slice of everything. For this fifth session my assignment was to do a fair amount of research on some of my top options, which had the practical by-product of forcing me to allocate my time among them. So I made out what I called my "visceral" top six:

  1. College career counselor
  2. Market researcher
  3. Professor of org. behavior
  4. I/O Psychologist
  5. Non-profit manager
  6. HS career counselor
I proceeded to look through job listings and other resources for each of these six, but with a strong bias toward those at the top of the list. I scribbled my findings into a Google Document, and Debbie and I perused my research job by job during our phone conversation.

As we worked our way down to the bottom few, it became clear that I was really just going through the motions. I'd emotionally attached to the jobs at the top of the list, actually the one at the very top of the list, so it seemed fruitless to invest a lot of time in pressing forward on all of them. So I said it: "I think I'm ready to commit to the top career on my list, college career counseling." And apparently that was a good answer, because we talked a bit more about how to move forward, then wrapped up the call after 20 minutes.

Even now as I type this entry, my MBTI "perceiving" trait is flaring up in full force. I feel almost guilty for ruling out the ones at the bottom of the list. What's wrong with being a non-profit manager?, I'm asking myself. Nothing, of course. The whole purpose of this exercise is that nothing's wrong with the 2nd or 5th or 100th choice. I just can't pursue everything at once.

The next step is to figure out what degree is most helpful for pursuing these jobs. Since there's no obvious right answer, or at least I can't find it on the Web if there is, I'm going to need to contact people in this field to talk about how to break in. In essence I want to keep two steps ahead, thinking both about school and about how to build relationships to help in my job search after school.

But at least I made a decision. I think I should feel proud.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Metaphor

Imagine this scene. You're in high school shop class -- I've never actually been in one of these classes, but I can imagine what it must look like from TV or somewhere -- and the class is practicing drilling holes in a board. Each of your peers is sitting merrily, two to a desk, each with a drill and a piece of wood.

Only, you don't have a drill to go with your board. You have an Intel Pentium computer chip, not the newest model, but a pretty good one. And you've got to figure out how you're going to drill a hole in that wood.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Sick

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been sick with some sort of flu or other virus that's just totally sapping my energy. I've slept the past four days straight, and this is the first time I've felt well enough to go sit in a coffee shop and write.

Before last Friday, well, I don't have much excuse for not writing. It's just that last week at work was somehow painless, a fairly new experience for me. I don't know why. Maybe I'm getting better at coping. Maybe it's that I have an exit plan getting clearer by the week, I dunno. Maybe I'm distracting myself into a faint hum of contentment with mediocrity. Who knows?

Thursday, February 21, 2008

CC4A: Researching careers

Yesterday was my fourth career counseling appointment of six. However, Debbie ended the appointment after half an hour and said that our next appointment will also be 30 minutes, so I infer that I should consider the two together as session number four.

At the previous session she had given me the assignment of looking up various candidate careers in the Occupational Outlook Handbook and assessing the future climate for each. I'm not sure if the shorter session was because I did an incomplete job of this, or if it's just part of the natural iterative give-and-take of counseling, i.e. assign a task, review it when it's completed, and keep moving forward by steps. Either way, I think we're moving forward at a good pace, and her task assignments are helping me pull off the balancing act between taking forever to research EVERY plausible career and not taking long enough hence deciding by impulse.

As I collected the data for potential careers, I assembled them into this table:


Positives

Questions/doubts

Marketing mgr

(specifically, market research or Web marketing)

· Uses analytical skill in a people-focused role.

· Strategic planning.

· Very versatile – can apply to any geography or industry.

· Web experience is somewhat transferrable, esp. SEO.

· Web marketing probably lends itself well to consulting/freelancing.

· Upward mobility, if that matters to me.

· Highest compensation on this list.

· “Corporate” culture? Perhaps less in Web industry.

· Long hours. (Not so bad if I’m interested in my work.)

Non-profit manager
OOH

  • Obvious sense of purpose.

· Strategic planning.

· Moderately versatile – can apply to any geography. Experience is probably transferable to other industries.

· Could aim at one of my “real” long-term goals – one day consulting for n/ps whose mission I share.

· Past experience of lots of bureaucracy in n/ps. Are managers able to “see above” the daily BS?

· Have to get past negative feelings associated with pursuing this path abortively in 2005.

School counselor

  • Obvious sense of purpose.
  • I enjoy helping people confront issues or plan their future.

· I enjoy working this population, esp. high-school age.

· Geographically versatile.

· I once read somewhere that this career path can also lead to career counseling for adults. Not sure if this is true.

· Academic year would be great! Could I pursue personal projects (e.g., travel; semipro poker; outreach stuff) in my off months? Or is the summer full of conferences, paperwork, etc.?

  • Unclear whether this involves a counseling or an education degree.
  • I’ve been “warned” that education schools can be less intellectually rigorous than some other disciplines. Is this true?
  • Salary less than some other options although adequate.

Teacher
(e.g. high school social science or special ed)

  • Obvious sense of purpose.
  • I enjoy teaching.

· I enjoy working with this population.

· Geographically versatile.

· Academic year.

  • Reservations about education schools
  • Lowest salary here.

Professor/researcher, Organizational Behavior (also possible: Soc, Econ, etc.)

  • Academia might suit me. Raw intellect and curiosity are more highly valued here.
  • Great freedom to pursue my own research interests, subject to guidance.
  • Sense of purpose: Expanding knowledge.
  • Academic year.
  • Sabbaticals are more common here than anywhere else.
  • Academia is full of bureaucracy
  • Publish or perish. As long as I were researching something I liked, I don’t think that would be so bad.
  • PhD is a lot of work. I need to gain self-confidence that I won’t just get bored and scuttle it two years in.

Industrial/Organizational Psychologist
OOH

  • This is a really intriguing field, and I think I would really love studying how people work best.
  • Sense of purpose: improving the work environment for others.
  • Lends itself to consulting.
  • Necessary to catch up on a lot of undergrad psych courses, which will take a long time. Any way to shorten this time (e.g., corequisites)?

And finally, an eventual goal that I hinted at above:

Church/non-profit consultant
(specializing in issues of religious and cultural change)

Is this a sudden change in tack?

Not really. Reading They Like Jesus but Not the Church has reminded me of this big aspiration, but it was already underlying some of my analysis above.

Some thoughts about this idea:

  • In a way this is my ultimate goal, but I don’t know how to get there.
  • This isn’t really a well-defined career path, so I may need to follow along with something better defined, gaining in:
    • experience
    • contacts
    • resources (savings)

Until I have a clearer idea how to pull this off.

  • Could be a full-time or bivocational goal – hence any other career where I make a living but have time to play a positive role in this way, via networking, writing, etc. is fine.
  • However, a “day job” more closely aligned to these interests is probably a good thing.

  • So it might be helpful to assess the above options in terms of how close they get me there.
  • My previous volunteer experience in outreach is closely related to this. It provides first-hand experience, and I would like to do that sort of thing again (possibly bivocationally). However, more important to me than helping a few people in my surroundings is equipping others to help people in their surroundings!

Later on, I scribbled down some more thoughts that I never shared with Debbie:

And finally, an eventual goal that I hinted at above:

Church/non-profit consultant
(specializing in issues of religious and cultural change)

Is this a sudden change in tack?

Not really. Reading They Like Jesus but Not the Church has reminded me of this big aspiration, but it was already underlying some of my analysis above.

Some thoughts about this idea:

  • In a way this is my ultimate goal, but I don’t know how to get there.
  • This isn’t really a well-defined career path, so I may need to follow along with something better defined, gaining in:
    • experience
    • contacts
    • resources (savings)

Until I have a clearer idea how to pull this off.

  • Could be a full-time or bivocational goal – hence any other career where I make a living but have time to play a positive role in this way, via networking, writing, etc. is fine.
  • However, a “day job” more closely aligned to these interests is probably a good thing.



  • So it might be helpful to assess the above options in terms of how close they get me there.
  • My previous volunteer experience in outreach is closely related to this. It provides first-hand experience, and I would like to do that sort of thing again (possibly bivocationally). However, more important to me than helping a few people in my surroundings is equipping others to help people in their surroundings!


So I'm not sure if the above is really what I was supposed to be doing as I researched, but it certainly felt helpful to compile it!

For the next two weeks I have several more concrete items Debbie gave me to research. For example, how do you become a college career counselor? What sort of degree is needed for that? What's the job outlook for marketing researchers? This is all great stuff to be thinking about, but it's a little overwhelming. It feels like there's no way I can possibly fit in all the research I need to do when I keep coming home so depressed and just worn out by my day job.

Oh well, at least I'm excited about something in my life, and that's way better than being excited about nothing.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Hanging in there -- barely

To try to motivate myself to concentrate on work that doesn't inherently inspire me, I make up a lot of games and challenges. The most consistent one is to keep a daily count of the number of times I consciously shut down superfluous stuff like Web surfing and make myself focus on whatever I'm supposed to be doing, or at least what I think I'm supposed to be doing. Then I reward myself, presently at the tune of 20 cents per point, towards the purchase of some frivolity such as a poker book.

(I'll break in and say that to the non-ADHD this may sound childish, or like I'm lazy or undisciplined or have no compunction about getting paid to goof off. Hopefully by the fact that you're reading this blog, you realize that life isn't as simple as all that for some of us, and that it requires conscious effort for some of us to make ourselves concentrate.)

Some days I forget to keep score, but in general my nadir is something like 5 or 7 -- on days where I come in, do some productive stuff in the morning, then think, "Screw it," and stop making the effort to focus. (I still do some work after that, just that I don't make that same conscious effort.) Until recently my high score had been something like 15 to 20. Lately I've been racking up days of 25 or 30. That's not because I'm any more motivated or excited about my work. To the contrary, I have less and less idea why I'm even here. The higher scores are just because I've been trying hard to "brute force" my way through this lack of motivation. I don't think that approach will work forever, but at least it's getting me through another day at a time.

Question of the day: An eccentric billionaire has offered you a job digging a ditch in his back yard, then filling it back in. What salary would you require for such a quintessentially futile task?

Monday, February 18, 2008

Miscellany / So what’s your story?

I’m struggling even more than usual to concentrate today, for a couple of reasons. One is that one of our co-workers left the company. She was pretty much the person here with whom I most identified, and the operation was six people, so it’s hard not to let that distract me.

Secondly, I had a conversation at lunch that really confirmed and even expanded my sense that I work on a site without a clear purpose. Perhaps it’s just a communication gap, whereby the boss has never clearly expressed the goals for this site. Or perhaps those goals and strategy really don’t exist, and the plan has always been to “Just put up a site on that domain and see if anyone shows up.” At any rate, this gets back to the stuff about me being MBTI intuitive. If I don’t know that there’s a bigger plan, then it’s really hard to motivate myself.

I have my fourth of six career counseling appointments on Wednesday. I think I'll beg my counselor to please please pleeeeeeease give me permission to quit in good conscience!

I’d like to use the blog as a means of communication with the adult ADHD community, and to learn about other people’s experiences. On one Web analytics blog that I love, the author makes a point to end each post with one or more questions. I don’t know if I’ll do that all the time, but I’d like to get in that habit.

So what about you, Dear Reader? What brought you here today, and what’s your experience with working life as an ADHD or INFP or merely jaded and frustrated adult? Or conversely, what makes you happy about your working environment? Let’s start a conversation in the comments.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Whine whine whine

I'm trying to cut down on the mopey, "emo" posts here. I have multiple motivations for blogging, but the biggest one is to document my feelings and actions for the benefit of others in the same boat. Ranting repetitively about how I feel at work probably isn't that helpful to that end. (However, the second-biggest motivation for blogging is to use it as a coping mechanism, and repetitive rants are great for that purpose!)

Just thinking a lot about the need for stimulation.... rewarding myself for not surfing (too much), clapping my hands, imagining a marching band doing circles around my brain, whatever I have to do to survive.

One thing that would probably help, based on my career counselor's recommendation, is to take more (or in my case, clearer) breaks during the day. I goof off plenty during the day, but more important is to actually get up from the computer and walk around a bit.

Monday, February 11, 2008

A very lame entry

Need stimulation.... badly. Blue Valkyrie is about to die.

No joke -- sometimes during the day I just start clapping my hands because I feel the incredible need to do something. I'm sure my coworkers must wonder what that's about. A saner alternative that I've tried a couple of times is to bring in a few poker chips to stack and play with, but they became such a conversation piece that I stopped doing it. Maybe if I just used generic chips instead of real casino chips from my collection....

Actually, it's more interesting to sit here and ponder why the couple of coding tasks I could be doing don't get me more fired up. I mean, I have evidence galore that coding just isn't what I should be doing, so in some ways I'm gilding the lily here. If someone tells you Career X isn't ideal for you, and wouldn't you prefer Careers A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J?, it's sort of silly to invest more time thinking about why Career X isn't ideal.

But still, I like some things about coding, and self-knowledge is valuable, so I sit here pondering why I can't get started on these tasks. Blame the boss is way too easy, but I really think it's because I have no clear priorities set for my time. I know that I used to perceive one of these projects as really important; then it became clear that my perception was "misaligned," and so I stopped thinking about that one for a few weeks. The other one is just finishing up some work so we feel like we're getting our money's worth from a vendor, but frankly, it's a feature that won't have a dozen users by the end of its season in a couple of months. It's very hard to motivate myself to do either of these.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Tilt

One of my coworkers is convinced that I need to be more direct in expressing my views to our boss. I've been trying for, well, for the better part of the last six months to suggest that we need to think more about the content that's lacking on the site I work on, and less about writing code to produce bells and whistles. I've been suggesting this diplomatically, and it hasn't gained any traction. Her premise, if I'm understanding it, is that I should go to my boss's office and say something tactful but direct along the lines of, "No offense, but we need to think about why people aren't using this site."

This just does not compute.

I'm trying hard to be open-minded enough to consider that she could be right. Perhaps the boss just isn't sensitive to subtle hints. But what I've learned through bitter experience is, you're never going to win in the workplace trying to convince someone that they're wrong. You're just not. Especially not your boss. Obviously our boss has a lot invested in this strategy of "hire software developers to put neat applets on the site." Trying to talk him into adapting that strategy, to seeing the value of anything besides hiring software developers, is sort of pointless. (Never mind the aspect of talking myself out of a job; at this point I'd be delighted to get severance and unemployment if they decided they needed something besides a developer.)

People in power don't care for those who question their fundamental assumptions, do they? I suppose I need to learn to present the idea in such a way that the boss thinks it's his idea. I don't know how to do that.

The whole situation is reflective of the tension that this work generates for me. Normal people can just turn this whole drama off, can be happy they're paid to dig a hole and then happy they're paid to fill the hole back in. If only. I'd love to be able to turn my brain off, to literally not care whether there's any point to my work or not, to really be apathetic to whether anyone uses the site I work on or whether people who see it for the first time consider coming back. I wish the big picture didn't always matter to me. But I'm cursed to be MBTI intuitive, so this matters to me greatly.

Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness

Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness by Bruce Levine

I found this article a few days ago reposted here and it reminded me of fairlane's Jonestown blog -- thanks for the link by the way -- in its theme of suppression of those who question the status quo by labeling the mentally ill.

Throughout American history, both direct and indirect resistance to authority has been diseased. In an 1851 article in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Louisiana physician Samuel Cartwright reported his discovery of "drapetomania," the disease that caused slaves to flee captivity. Cartwright also reported his discovery of "dysaesthesia aethiopis," the disease that caused slaves to pay insufficient attention to the master's needs. Early versions of ODD and ADHD?

In Rush's lifetime, few Americans took anarchia seriously, nor was drapetomania or dysaesthesia aethiopis taken seriously in Cartwright's lifetime. But these were eras before the diseasing of defiance had a powerful financial ally in Big Pharma.

In every generation there will be authoritarians. There will also be the "bohemian bourgeois" who may enjoy anti-authoritarian books, music, and movies but don't act on them. And there will be genuine anti-authoritarians, who are so pained by exploitive hierarchies that they take action. Only occasionally in American history do these genuine anti-authoritarians actually take effective direct action that inspires others to successfully revolt, but every once in a while a Tom Paine comes along. So authoritarians take no chances, and the state-corporate partnership criminalizes anti-authoritarianism, pathologizes it, markets drugs to "cure" it and financially intimidates those who might buck the system.

It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine -- or Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X -- were diagnosed as a youngster with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill pills. The question is: Has this dream become reality?

It certainly applies to more than just teens, but I suppose most deviance is "diagnosed" and "treated" at that life stage, especially if the doctors and authority figures have their way.

Now, I'm not quite this cynical about where we stand. I'm really not sure if overmedication and labeling of dubious mental illnesses is something that's been plotted in nefarious back-room meetings for decades, or if it's just something that developed organically. Certainly the pharmaceutical companies have a huge financial stake in overmedication. Therefore I think they're just seeking their best interest, totally orthagonal to any desire by authoritarians to keep the serfs docile and somewhat happy.

But still, when you think about fascism beyond people just throwing the word out at someone they don't like -- well, what exactly is the union of government power and corporate power if not what we're seeing nowadays? It really creeps me out, because I think Americans are generally too stupid and addicted to bread and circuses to realize where we stand. Just give me some sweet narratives about freedom and democracy and leave me alone to watch the football game or American Idol; I'm certainly not awake enough to really question whether I'm free or my country is democratic.

Anyway, I'm off on a rant, but.... yeah. If things aren't as bad as Bruce Levine suggests, they could easily get that bad.

Why software isn't the worst possible career for me

In a message to a fellow INFP approaching career change, I wrote down a few thoughts that I think are worth posting. The premise is that I like some things about my present field, software development. In fact I like just enough to keep bringing me back to it, even though another career would probably be better suited.

As long as I'm learning something new, actually software is kind of cool. I can think to myself, "Wow, so THAT's how that works!" But when it comes time to plow my way through coding something that's not new or innovative, I lose patience very quickly and have no focus....

Making a change is hard and risky. I've been just unhappy enough to blame specific bosses or to otherwise think that my next experience in software will be the one that fulfills the potential to excite me. Now I realize that it's far more likely that I just need a career change.

Of course it hasn't helped that every time I've contemplated a career change and attempted to act on that contemplation, something really bad has come out of it:

  • My disastrous experience marketing for the "Christian" college in which a rather sadistic boss fired me after a few weeks despite the dean's (her boss's) assurances I had nothing to worry about.
  • My entry-level social services job, where I realized that individual contributors can't do much in that field without at least a masters.
  • Applying to business school with the idea of specializing in non-profit management, only to have my star recommender disappear on me leading me to give up the whole thing in disgust.
  • That abusive "ministry internship" that had my boss, a missionary whom I had earlier respected, screaming at me never to do ministry.
So much negativity. Sigh.

Therefore, it's repeatedly seemed easier just to shut my mouth and plod on through with the software work. At least I know I possess the skills. I just don't possess the motivation, not for more than a few months at a time.

It's hard to have faith that this time, the transition will be smoother.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

CC3: Fresh ideas, renewed enthusiasm

Yesterday was my third one-hour phone session of six with my career counselor. I came out of that very enthusiastic and excited about writing up a post about it, but in true INFP+ADHD form I got busy with other things and am only getting to it now.

The first session was mostly me telling her my work history, and the second was largely her reading and "interpreting" the fancy reports from the MBTI, Strong, and 16PF. This third session was the first one where I felt like her role was to really provide substantial amounts of new information to help me pare down my list of prospective careers into something manageable. She also helped me assess the steps that would be necessary to pursue each one.

Per her instructions I had marked up the page from the Strong with the ten top careers, highlighting the aspects of each role that would appeal to me. I had also done some written exercises on values, work/life balance, etc. After this third session, I've pared my prospective careers down to four:

Marketing: This was a suggestion from Strong, "Marketing manager", that i had thought about but not really taken seriously. I'm really warming up to this because I'm finding that I enjoy learning and thinking about how to use Web analytics, and that's clearly a marketing question. If I go this route the obvious next step is an MBA. It's worth noting that some of my efforts on that horrible abortive effort to apply to business school back in 2005 could be useful here; for example, I already have great GMATs. Debbie stressed that I would need to be sure to get an internship, rather than just assuming that the degree itself would be sufficient to help me break in. She also suggested focusing on the international aspects of marketing in light of my cross-cultural interests and skills, which I think is great advice.

Non-profit management: After publishing the first draft of this post I realized that I left out another topic we had discussed briefly, non-profit management. I think it probably involves the same career path as the marketing, i.e. an MBA, but perhaps with a different mix of schools.

School counseling: This is an old favorite, one of the Strong's ten, and still a very viable one. We didn't talk too much about how I would get there, but I gather it would involve getting at least a masters in some sort of education or counseling program.

Special education: This was another of the Strong's ten. Honestly it excites me less than the counseling and seems to have a lot in common with it, although I'm not sure why it excites me less. I love teaching, and some past experiences with special-needs adults have been extremely positive. Debbie mentioned that in this field, there are so few males that my sex would probably work to my advantage. It's a viable option, but probably the least exciting of these four.

Organizational behavior or industrial/organization psychology: I first mentioned OB as an academic subject that fascinates me. I suppose it would involve getting a PhD in business, and then becoming a professor at a business school or perhaps some sort of consultant. I don't know a lot about OB as such, but I sit around thinking about questions like, "If Scott Adams knows enough about what's wrong with Corporate America to ridicule it in Dilbert, and if all his readers viscerally know that he's on target, then why don't corporations fix these obvious problems?" Stuff like that.

IOP was Debbie's suggestion after I mentioned OB, and the more I look into it the more it intrigues me. I found the USN&WR list of top schools with that specialization, although I could only see the top three without paying to register. Michigan State, Minnesota, Bowling Green -- hmm, a very Midwestern flavor. Is this just to improve the productivity of manufacturing workers, e.g. in the auto industry, even as their jobs go overseas, or does it also apply to knowledge fields like software development, law, whatever? Unclear, but that's one thing I'll be researching. Alas, it does appear that you need some undergrad psych courses to apply to grad programs, so I'd have to work at making up that deficiency. So it seemed natural to lump OB and IOP together.

So I came out of the conversation enthused about several ideas. My task for the two weeks until our next talk is to research some of these careers.

Monday, February 4, 2008

A fellow INFPer, Meyers-Briggs prayers, and more!

For work I'm learning about Google Analytics, and that's lead me to start checking these metrics on my own site to see who's out there reading this blog. One great thing GA lets you do is see those search terms that lead people to your site, and by running those same searches you can find some fun and quite relevant content.

Apparently a couple of people have found my blog partially using the search term INFP, which is awesome. Hi there, folks. One of the searches also led me to this post: cybette's blog: INFP = ADD = Depression. Very interesting stuff, and I like her hypotheses about different reasons why our personality type may correlate with depression and ADHD, especially this one:
So what causes depression? Stress (among other factors). Feeling the need to "fit in" a world dominated by ESTJ/SJ's, or at least a world where ESTJ type is encouraged (many U.S. presidents are ESTJ's, including George W. Bush). Also, a lot of gifted and creative kids are mis-diagnosed with ADD, simply because they are misunderstood.
Count me shocked, shocked!, that GWB would show up as a J. Anyway, it's very interesting stuff.

She also cited short "prayers" for each of the 16 MBTI types. Here are a couple:

• INFP: God, help me to finish everything I sta
• ENFP: God, help me to keep my mind on one th -Look a bird- ing at a time.
Pretty much, yeah.

Danger, danger

Feelings of worthlessness and self-pity are strong today. Trying to trust God with it.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Nutrition or delicacy?

I started to entitle this "OK-ness", which would be ironic since the overuse of the suffix -ness is one of my millions of peeves. Then I wanted to entitle it "Hope," but I got off topic.

Yesterday I had a session with another counselor, not the career one, and I kept trying to present a balanced view between the fact that I'm incredibly frustrated during my workday but generally optimistic about the direction in which things will soon be headed. I actually was surprised that he kept summarizing the conversation in generally positive terms, because I don't think I sound very cheery when I'm on that topic. But I really do have to remind myself that as difficult as I find it from day-to-day, things really are headed toward getting better.

It's hard to recall that now, because I'm really struggling again today. It dawned on me that one reason it's really hard to explain excruciating boredom to normal people is because I really don't know if they have a category for it! Perhaps they see boredom as merely the absence of something interesting. So if you're bored, well, it's not as good as if something really wonderful is happening to you. Conversely, it's not as bad as something awful is happening to you. I mean, it's really neither bad nor good, just... boring. Right? I really don't know if other people see boredom that way.

This comparison may be a bit contrived, but it strikes me as somewhat akin to the difference between food -- any food -- and some particular delicacy, say, chocolate cake. I suppose that most people desire some sort of intellectual stimulation, much as they might desire chocolate cake. If they happen upon a piece of cake every week or two, great! If not, nothing really cataclysmic happens. They're missing out on something desirable, perhaps, but it's clearly a desire, not a need.

When I go without intellectual stimulation, I feel starved, desperate to rectify the situation. For me it's a need, not a desire.

I don't think other people can get that. When I imagine them saying to me, "Just suck it up! It's work. It's not supposed to be fun," I have the feeling they think they're talking about chocolate cake, not realizing that I'm dying of malnutrition.