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.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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:
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.
*sigh*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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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