To Boldly Go Where Many Have Gone Before!

July 7, 2016 1:53 PM

I want a real career. After a decade of professional frittering, I'm finally coming into my own — I have deep focus and a desire to invest heavily in my future. What should I make of myself?

I'm 27, with some good nods in my favor... and some less-good ones.

THE GOOD:
I rock at self-directed learning. I'm able to pour 40-60 hours a week into a DIY education. I'm good at finagling mentors and navigating community resources. I like working long hours if I can do it on my own timetable. Money's not a huge issue, I'm poor but used to living slim. I have no debts or personal obligations. Don't care about kids, marriage or property. I dig travel. I'm adventurous. I'm willing to move to a new city, pursue specialized training, or consider realms far outside my wheelhouse.

THE BAD:
My work history is scattered and mostly off the books. I'm also a college dropout. I stupidly trashed a full ride at 20 and led a strange, funny little life faffing about in "post-millennial burnout." I've worked hard to untangle my bitter childhood nest of depression and ennui. After considerable effort, I finally feel whole, shiny and in charge!

Unfortunately, I do have health issues. The worst is an autoimmune disorder that gives me joint pain, fatigue and insomnia. When I'm out of commission I can easily sleep half the day. I have to guard my energy and adhere to a strict lifestyle regime to ward off flares. For example, I tried to attend a code bootcamp this spring, and after three weeks the long twelve-hour days pushed me into an energy spiral that took a month to recover. Despite doing well I had to drop out :/ I'm gradually stabilizing under the care of a good doctor, but I don't know how this disorder will affect me in the future. Between that and being a bonafide night owl (peak hours 8PM-2AM), I'm wary of day jobs or rigorous fixed schedules.

I've thought about going back to university, but frankly undergrad bores me. That's why I left the first time. I want to be doing something now, not plowing through three years of intro courses before I can even aid in research. Learning is fun but the slow, impersonal style of lower levels is... so dull. (Though I do miss batting around problems with professors and delving into a stocked library!) I wish I could go straight to grad school.

PREFERENCES:
I'm queer and kinky. I want to live in a place where that's not a burden. I like big cities with temperate weather and decent transit or bike commute.

BROAD INTERESTS:
cognition, sensory processing & visualization, data science, design patterns, programming, math, investigative reporting, butterflies, art, essay writing, sexuality, climate change, policy reform

DISPOSITION:
Friendly, even-tempered, dispassionate. Generous with my time, protective of my mental energy. I have a playful, dark sense of humor I trot out for friends and accomplices. I prefer high pitched one-on-one interactions or the anonymity of crowds... small pushy hierarchies make me frazzle. I like being around goofballs, artists and smartypants! I have no trouble playing to a variety of crowds or selling ideas I believe in, I can be diplomatic and charming. But it takes a lot out of me to manage so many faces and feelings.

I'm very independent, I've always handled my own time and business. I'm skeptical of authority and have a reflexive distaste for external impositions — whether that's rules, rote orders or schedules. (I do my best to moderate this and choose commitments wisely.) Bureaucracy makes me blech. I collaborate best with others when I respect their work and see them treat people fairly. Micromanagers, workplace bickering or repetitious tasks bring on huge bouts of depression... it's like being stuck in molasses. I put up a good front then privately wilt. Service, admin or caretaking roles are not a good fit.

I adore pure research. Applied efforts interest me less, though I'll go out on a limb for important social or political issues. Procedural motor skills like building or mechanics are hard. I'm definitely a global, abstract, conceptual thinker. I also have aphantasia (can't visualize) so things like designing, drawing or remembering sensory and autobiographical details are tricky. Asking questions, playing with ideas, scanning data and finding patterns is what makes my heart flutter. For current obsessions I have laser sharp focus, I'm average at time management and follow-thru for everything else. I learn academic items very quickly if left to my own immersive, nonlinear devices.

I'm willing to work on my shortcomings and enlist every aid I can manage.

* * *

TLDR;
I feel happiest when I have autonomy and meaningful work that takes up most of my time. I like people, but I'm not a people person. I live in my head. I don't care about money. Good at learning, bad at institutions. I feel like I have the potential to contribute something substantial... research, education, tech, or my own business perhaps.

Have I savaged my chances with this late bloom? Where might I excel? How do I get there?

posted by fritillary to Education (11 answers total)

Best answer: I hear you on a number of fronts. Curious to see what kinds of answers you get; couple of thoughts, though...

- Health and sleep. It's great that you've got good care and are feeling more stabilized. I think this factor has got to orient and ground any other decisions. It's no good to do amazing thing A, but spend most of your time working or recovering from it. This may involve closing some doors. (Or with sleep, if it comes to it, possibly excluding jobs that would put you at your worst most of the time.) BUT having a great doc and other care is going to help a lot (probably). (I'm still looking for an ideal team myself, but I know people with thyroid issues who finally found the right help after years of not getting it, and live almost completely normal lives. No restrictions on work.) Alternatively, consider employers who can support (i.e. absorb the risk and cost of) an employee with variable and important health needs. These are usually the big, bureaucratic beasts, unfortunately... startups and small business owners etc are not usually in a position to support people in this way. So, there might be some tradeoffs, and I think they kind of depend on your health status and care.

- I hate admin, bureaucracy, and office politics, etc too. But it's in everything. If it's not coming from your coworkers or boss, bullshit is going to come from your customers/clients/suppliers. Assume, expect, accept that bullshit will take up at least 20% of any job (that is a very optimistic %, btw). (It's hard, I know.) Good luck.
posted by cotton dress sock at 2:26 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This is probably an obvious question, but if you were doing well at coding bootcamp but the schedule was too intense, why not self study the curriculum at your own pace? (Or make up your own). There's an enormous amount of learning material on the web for basically any type of programming that might interest you, perfect for a self-directed learner. And, depending on the language, you can start building toy projects with only basic knowledge, so that might help keep your interest and engage your creative side.

I should warn you though, that this:
"For current obsessions I have laser sharp focus, I'm average at time management and follow-thru for everything else"
is probably something you want to avoid using to conceptualize yourself. Literally no job on earth is free of drudgery, and some of the coolest sounding/most meaningful jobs include large stretches of tedious work. Sustained, long-term focus is probably going to be important if you want to be successful in making a career switch.
posted by loquacious crouton at 2:33 PM on July 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

just on the auto-immune thing - for me (ms) working half time (week on, week off) has been absolutely awesome. but how you get there from where you are now, i don't know, sorry.
posted by andrewcooke at 2:53 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wasted a big chunk of my life searching for meaningful work. Sometimes I've been lucky and gotten some. Mostly, though, I now work for a pay check in circumstances that give me a fair amount of freedom and also let me care for my own health issues as well as find and make meaning outside of work. So keep in mind that sometimes a Plan B job is a good bridge to something better; sometimes it's perfectly fine as Plan A. You have gotten to this good place while you are still young. You are willing to relocate. You are passionate and also self-caring. It took me until my mid-50s to get to that place, so go you and good luck!
posted by Bella Donna at 3:14 PM on July 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

You seem to be ruling out a lot of things (bureaucracy, certain kinds of drudgery) but as others have said, you will find these things everywhere. However, a few things about that:

- I am really bad at, and really hate, most administrative tasks (I have ADHD). However, once I got into a career I liked, those things didn't bother me as much. So if there's something you think you would really like, but it requires you to get your BA, or it requires dealing with bureaucracy, don't rule it out.

- Of the things you don't like, figure out which you hate less, and try to lean towards situations with those things. For instance, with a small business, you may have less bureaucracy, but you'll have a lot more drudgery, because you have to do everything.

I would also really caution you against thinking something like "For current obsessions I have laser sharp focus, I'm average at time management and follow-thru for everything else" is a fixed personality trait that can't change. This is how I was for a long time too (again, ADHD) but it is something you can change and if there's one thing I've noticed from observing people who are successful, they put the work in every day even if they're not inspired. This is true for everything from being an entry-level admin assistant to a bestselling author. And I know you said you don't care about money, but the kinds of rarified things you're interested, well, a lot of people are interested in those things, and so it's competitive. Being able to reliably produce will take you far in a competitive field.
posted by lunasol at 3:50 PM on July 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you all! To clear a few things: I already sustain myself with freelance web design, it's good for my health but I don't enjoy it much. (All the creativity's up front.) I'm already studying back end development / data science / algorithms for fun. Also I haven't ruled out bureaucracy or drudge! Slogging away is endemic to all work, I know that. But I find these things terribly draining, despite my best efforts, and would like to work toward minimizing them in the long run. I don't see my traits as fixed or inherent, habits are changeable and the brain is always learning. What I'm saying is that after being VERY, VERY BAD at time management and follow-thru in my early 20s, I greased up my elbows, and now I am average at them :)

Hoping to hear ideas and paths I hadn't thought of!
posted by fritillary at 4:27 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't mean this nastily, but there is drudgery in literally every job. It reads a little bit like what you're saying is "I will eat any diet to get healthy, so long as it is all ice cream."

I wasn't very different in my early 20s, and I drifted into consulting. In those days, consulting was a good and easy choice for smart people who could solve problems and talk fast and who thought they knew better. Consulting quickly made me see that a lot of what you are describing as paperwork icky blech is honestly just a lot of what it takes to grow a business from a mom & pop shop to a larger company. Every single company has it to a larger or a smaller degree. In the end, I stepped out of the line into a large values driven company which had less centralisation and paperwork but it still exists. And office politics-- that happens when there is both bad management and human beings in the same building. Happens in every field.

My suggestion to you is to figure out what motivates you enough to stick to something. Something you like enough so that the drudge work of getting it done doesn't feel that bad. It certainly isn't too late, but do you honestly want a career?
posted by frumiousb at 4:37 PM on July 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

This isn't fleshed out or anything, but maybe look into data science - it sounds like it might be something you're good at and would enjoy. I don't really know what the job market is, but there could be potential there for either good pay or flexible scheduling (or perhaps both).
posted by pennypiper at 5:25 PM on July 7, 2016

(I didn't mean to imply that the coursera course alone would be qualification enough for getting hired as a data scientist, it would just be an introduction to the field)
posted by pennypiper at 5:27 PM on July 7, 2016

Best answer: CLEP tests are the most common way to get college credit by exam. There are others.

I also dropped out of college at age 20 with two years of classes and no credential. I later tested out of three classes and took two college classes to wrap up an AA in Humanities and and lock in those old credit so I don't have to start from scratch if I ever go back to school. If you do not turn those classes into a degree and wait too many years, at some point, they will not be accepted as transfer credit.

It took me one semester and not much money. I took my two classes online to accommodate my health and other issues.

If your web design income is portable -- ie you get your clients online and it doesn't matter where you work, you will still have an income stream -- you could use online resources like http://www.bestplaces.net/ to pick a location that is more affordable than your current location and potentially better for your health. My freelance income is portable and I did exactly that. I am feeling better and working more and that is opening up more opportunities for me.

Although there are night owl jobs, the kind of mental work you seem interested in tends to be day jobs. Like you, I have health problems and I used to be a night owl. For a time, I worked the evening shift processing insurance claims. This shift was later eliminated and I was moved to day shift. Since moving to day shift had always been the goal, I was fine with this change, though I had no control over it. Still, the first few weeks on day shift were hard.

So, you might look for jobs of the sort you want that have some odd time slot. They often seem to have trouble filling jobs with weird time slots. Most people do not want to work the evening shift. (They had to require new employees to accept night shift at my company to fill the night shift. Most people did not want that shift.)

It sounds like you want something rather niche, with a lot of constraints and that sort of thing is inherently hard to solve. My experience with AskMe is that breaking problems down into smaller components and asking about them separately gets me better, more useful answers. So, it might help if you do a few Asks about individual pieces of this, like asking for ideas for night shift work and experiences with night shift work as a single Ask and addressing other bits of this in different questions, later.

I think no one can really pick a career for you. A career seems to be one of two things: Something that is personally meaningful to you and/or something with "a future" (in terms of being able to make more money and so forth). Only you can decide what is personally meaningful. Many things can be turned into something with a future if you just stick at it and look for ways to make it into that.

You say money does not matter. I think you need to rethink that. I have made the mistake of saying things like that. With health issues, money is not the most important thing, because if it is too burdensome, it just will not work. But, a "real career" is generally one that makes at least a middle class income. And perhaps you have accepted that you do not have the basic health required by most such jobs.

But I think you really need to rethink your relationship to that idea. You need work that works for you within the constraints imposed by your health, but that isn't the same thing as money not mattering. If money really did not matter, you wouldn't be asking about paid work. You would be saying something like "Hey! I just won the lottery and plan to never work again! What are some awesome hobbies that fit with my following interests: butterflies, etc.."
posted by Michele in California at 5:46 PM on July 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Just a thought, Michelle's right that the kinds of job you seem interested in are more likely to be day jobs, but if you work remotely, you could perhaps engineer (either through the job or relocation) to live in a later time zone. From your employers perspective you'll be working a day job but depending on the offset and schedule, could be working an evening or night shift. There are a lot of IF's in making something like that work (right job, right time zone, right city to live in, etc.) but in some of those ways you are very flexible.

This is all just my impressions, but it seems to me like remote work is becoming more common, specifically for programmers (maybe other technical folks) hired by organizations in high cost of living cities who can't pay salaries (state universities come to mind) that are competitive for local COL and against other local organizations (tech companies, for profit sector) that have much deeper pockets and fewer rules about salary. You might not be able to get position like that until you have a professional reputation/resume/portfolio, since the big motivation for orgs to offer that option is to get better candidates.

Also those kinds of organizations may be more likely to offer better sick/personal leave, more realistic work expectations (less crunch, work all the hours, type stuff) and other benefits, which could be very beneficial for managing/living with a chronic health condition.
posted by pennypiper at 5:56 PM on July 11, 2016