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/ .
Thursday, March 27, 2008
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. :)
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.
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:
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.
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:
- College career counselor
- Market researcher
- Professor of org. behavior
- I/O Psychologist
- Non-profit manager
- HS career counselor
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.
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?
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?
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