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.

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.

Tell me what would make you happier -- no, tell me what I want to think would make you happier.

Imagine this scenario: [Anecdote removed. Although losing my present job wouldn't be a terrible setback in the long run, I'd prefer not to risk it or make myself subject to blackmail by getting too specific here. The point of the story was, the boss asked for some feedback, then embarrassed a person who gave it in a meeting because she gave not quite the precise feedback he wanted. This struck me as counter-productive and frankly rather detached from the big picture purpose of trying to improve morale, but hey, I'm not a manager so I don't get these things.]

Back in my naive days, I used to think that senior managers got to be senior because they possessed more of a big-picture view than the rest of the staff. Perhaps this was just wishful thinking on my part -- I'm MBTI iNtuitive, remember, which is a poor word choice by Myers and Briggs. They should have said big-freakiN'-picture. So perhaps it's self-serving to think that senior managers are supposed to have a big-picture orientation much like I do. But it has a certain logic to it. You'd think that the big boss would need to develop the broad strategy for the whole organization, and delegate the details to the specialists. Incidentally Strong listed "senior executive" as one of my Top 10 fitting careers, so I don't think I'm totally on the wrong track here.

But come to find out, there are probably plenty of people running companies who so get caught up in the details that they don't care much about the big picture. I can't imagine why running things makes them happy, but apparently it does.

Who knew?

CC2: Answering a lot of questions

I haven't blogged here for several days, for a couple of reasons. Mostly it's that I'm less inclined to write when I'm not suffering, and I've been working hard on leaving my career dissatisfaction to God and coping with the suffering (but not denying it!). That seems to be going relatively well.

Likewise, moving forward with the counseling has really helped. I still have issues, and indeed, the counseling is only confirming my impression that I'm not in the right career! But at least I don't feel so desperate to make something positive happen right away. I feel more inclined to trust that I can wait it out, because I know there's a plan in place to improve things. Some of my fellow Christian friends might see that need for a plan as a lack of faith. Perhaps.

And finally, despite the inadequate feedback where I work, I've gotten better at picking up on small bits of positive feedback. That makes me feel better about myself and feel valued here. Even though it really isn't a good long-term fit, it's a lot better for people like me to go to work every morning when we feel valued.

So then... about the career counseling.

I had session #2 yesterday, and to be honest it was more about Debbie reading my results to me than anything. I took the Meyer-Briggs Type Indicator, the Strong Interest Inventory, and the 16PF. I come out as:

• An INFP on the MBTI (strongly iNtuitive and weakly Introverted, moderate on the other two).
• SAE on the Strong
• I can't tell you what on the 16PF, but it certainly makes me sound emotionally unstable.

One of my favorite contrasts is that the 16PF gives me low potential for leadership (3 of 10), but one of the others indicates strong leadership potential. I think that reflects my ambiguous view of leadership: I love to motivate others to a common goal, but only if it's an authentic goal. I have no inclination whatsoever to be a bureaucratic middle manager, or for that matter senior manager.

I've been reading up on INFPs. I love this INFP profile from Typelogic. However, this one from personalitypage pissed me off with this graf:

INFPs do not like to deal with hard facts and logic. Their focus on their feelings and the Human Condition makes it difficult for them to deal with impersonal judgment. They don't understand or believe in the validity of impersonal judgment, which makes them naturally rather ineffective at using it. Most INFPs will avoid impersonal analysis, although some have developed this ability and are able to be quite logical. Under stress, it's not uncommon for INFPs to mis-use hard logic in the heat of anger, throwing out fact after (often inaccurate) fact in an emotional outburst.

However, the more I think about it (and about how MBTI defines "thinking" versus "feeling"), the more I realize why I'm so challenging. I'm not a typical F! To the contrary, I'm very good at logical thought. I just grow less enamored of it with each year of life experience, so I value logic only in situations that call for it. I think I come up F because I'm becoming more of a person who values feeling, even thought I'm still very capable of thinking.

In fact, I think this cuts to the heart of why it took them so long to diagnose me with ADHD. I've always done superbly in school, whereas most people like me can't focus on school. I guess it's a great reminder that four letters don't define who I am. It does remind me of my evil plan, with my best friend in college, to blow up the Greek system and replace it with 16 co-ed frats based around the MBTI.

In other news, a friend sent me a link to a careers-related blog, which led me to this fascinating NYT article about law and medicine being less prestigious than they used to be. It's a great point; in general our society values stability less than in the past. Maybe I'm well-positioned to gain in prestige as a vagabond -- as if prestige meant that much to me anyway.

Gradually returning to normal

I'm finding myself starting to worry about the same things that worried me before I got sick. Does software development interest me enough to keep doing it? What would I rather be doing all day? How can I keep solvent long enough to learn to do what it is I really should be doing? What exactly do I aspire to?

I wish I could keep the concern for the big picture, but not as worry per se. Worrying is pointless and stupid. Doing something to change the situation, that's where I need to spend my mental energy.

I finally finished all the tests for my next career counseling appointment tomorrow: MBTI, Strong, PF16. I actually like tests like that -- they help clarify my thinking about career issues -- but a few of the questions were vexing. Going from memory, this was the gist of one of the MBTI ones:

Would you rather have a boss who is:

• Consistent but unimaginative?
• Visionary but arbitrary?

Is it just me or do both of those extremes seem really unpleasant? I forget what I said, but I figured the general point of the question was to infer whether I like working with creative or "predictable" people. And in fact, I general like creative people. But if the cost is having my manager be arbitrary (that wasn't the precise word, but I took it to be a synonym), I take that to mean I might turn in the same work and get totally different feedback from one day to the next. As much as I love creative people, I don't think I could stand that.

Still.... can't a manager be visionary, a "creative," but still treat people in predictable fashion?