Tuesday, January 31, 2006
How I Found My Purpose: Chapter 6
After purchasing a second-hand laptop to write on, I set about composing my new epic blockbuster. The words just pored out of me for a couple of chapters, then life started to get in the way. My personal life was about as messy as it could get. I was living in a basement suite on a beautiful five-acre farm, just me and my dog. I was getting lonelier and lonelier, and I'd spent all my savings. Time to get a part-time job!
A temp firm got me a job at a Place I cannot mention for various legal reasons. It rapidly evolved into a full-time job, and the writing dried up. As soon as I could, I took my first paid vacation to attend a week-long career counselling workshop. That was when I discovered my unreasonable IQ, and the pointlessness of standard career counselling under those circumstances. It was devastating (again!) I began an aggressive program of personal research on giftedness and a desperate search for a good therapist who knew about my "condition". Luckily, I found one.
I stayed at the Place during this process because I appreciated the stability and the good pay with benefits. I loved some of the people I worked with and I loved being able to buy a brand new car. I wanted to really see if I could make a go of a less-than-ideal job. It's a common strategy among gifted people, like Einstein, who do one thing for money and then live their real life after work. I distracted myself with falling in love, painting classes, improv classes, yoga classes, classes, classes; but I regularly got depressed and angry from fighting the system and losing. I knew that eventually I would have to leave, as the Place and its stagnant organizational culture had nowhere for me to grow.
Under fraught circumstances, I did eventually leave. It took me at least a month to get over the psychological damage and to rebuild my self-confidence - but I was in love again, with an incredibly supportive and strong man. With his help, I decided that this was it. I was not going to disappear into another job that was wrong for me for another 4 years (I'd recognized the cycle!) I looked for a job, took a few MORE classes, did some volunteer work, and did a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then my case manager referred me to a program called "Determining Self-Employment Readiness".
Technorati tags: career gifted writing love
A temp firm got me a job at a Place I cannot mention for various legal reasons. It rapidly evolved into a full-time job, and the writing dried up. As soon as I could, I took my first paid vacation to attend a week-long career counselling workshop. That was when I discovered my unreasonable IQ, and the pointlessness of standard career counselling under those circumstances. It was devastating (again!) I began an aggressive program of personal research on giftedness and a desperate search for a good therapist who knew about my "condition". Luckily, I found one.
I stayed at the Place during this process because I appreciated the stability and the good pay with benefits. I loved some of the people I worked with and I loved being able to buy a brand new car. I wanted to really see if I could make a go of a less-than-ideal job. It's a common strategy among gifted people, like Einstein, who do one thing for money and then live their real life after work. I distracted myself with falling in love, painting classes, improv classes, yoga classes, classes, classes; but I regularly got depressed and angry from fighting the system and losing. I knew that eventually I would have to leave, as the Place and its stagnant organizational culture had nowhere for me to grow.
Under fraught circumstances, I did eventually leave. It took me at least a month to get over the psychological damage and to rebuild my self-confidence - but I was in love again, with an incredibly supportive and strong man. With his help, I decided that this was it. I was not going to disappear into another job that was wrong for me for another 4 years (I'd recognized the cycle!) I looked for a job, took a few MORE classes, did some volunteer work, and did a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then my case manager referred me to a program called "Determining Self-Employment Readiness".
Technorati tags: career gifted writing love
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Crawlingback out of the hole I have found myself in lately, I'll take a moment to comment. I'm really enjoying reading about your journey. From personal experience, I have always found self-employment the way to go. I also found standard career counselling useless but I'm curious as to why it is so useless for those with a higher IQ. What rationale did you arrive at?
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