ht: career changer/break?

bigbritish

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Oct 21, 2012
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This is kind of difficult for me, and I sometimes suffer because I don't know who else is out there that feels what I feel. I'm a college grad, I live in a city, I own my company with no cashflow at the moment. I work in software.

Here's what I'd like to change:

I don't want to be in software any more. I have worked for some of the major companies you've heard of. You'd say I'm talented and lucky, but I got into it out of sheer loneliness as a teenager. What I've learned through a lot of therapy and time is that I was extremely embarrassed to live in a "perfect" upper-middle class town with a single, divorced mother. I concealed and repressed my embarrassment because I wanted my mother to do Ok. I think even as a little kid I knew that she was doing something difficult. My brother would hit me and act really violent, and most of the time I used all of my strength to smile and pretend things were Ok. They weren't and so I first started to act out in school and then when I saw that got me a junky group of friends and gave me a bad reputation, I reclused.

It hurts me so bad and then it torments me because the thing that I did out of pain gives me my lifeblood and sustenance? I'm so confused because for such a long time I struggled to stay in school. My parents of course saw that computer software was profitable and it was the only stable thing I did, so that's naturally what they encouraged me to study. Now I have this degree in computer software and I hate every shred of it.

I just graduated, so after a high-profile internship this summer, I just don't think I can accomplish much greater with this set of misery? Gosh, I feel like a complete mess!

I have waited tables before, and I have so much respect for people that do labor and other things like this, but I went through hell on so many levels for my college degree. I don't don't don't want to work in computer software, but but but I am completely scared about what other job I could even work without a lot of training. I don't like numbers, I am horribly illogical, I like people, and my personality is very open, a little more feeling than thinking, very extroverted or very introverted, much more comfortable perceiving and intuiting.

I mentioned having a lot of repressed embarrassment. I kind of think I'm past getting the feelings out in the form of therapy, but it makes sense that I have to go through feeling a lot of these things over if I try to change some of the circumstances that resulted from it.

I don't know ho to tell my family this stuff either. I think I have to take it one step at a time and just figure out "what I want to do".

Suggestions apprec. think I'm gonna go take a career test!

EDIT: I don't think this is gonna be so simple for me. I think there are a lot of bad habits I learned through the years in my isolation and quiet sadness that -- I don't know -- make me a horrible person to have a relationship with. I just feel so bad for some of the ways I've acted in the past few years. To say I don't know how to interact with people and need practice with that is probably true. I don't mean in a demented kind of way that I can't interact at all, it's just that I lack meaningful relationships. So many times I've burned bridges with good friends, family, colleagues, and s/o's. I know it's something we all do from time to time, but I do it almost all the time and it's made me a person I can't be any more.
 
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You could check out something like the student conservation association (http://thesca.org/) or americorps. You don't need a ton of experience to get into a program. I know you just said you want to get out of software, but maybe GIS would interest you.

If you're not sure about what you even want to go into, I would think back to things you have really enjoyed - hobbies, electives you took in college, topics you enjoy reading about, issues you think are important. Maybe you'll come up with something new that way.
 
Renew your passport, travel to Marseilles, join the French Foreign Legion. Travel the world, meeting new & interesting people (and then killing them), after five years, shockingly, most First World problems and the people that whine about them do not seem that significant.

You'll still have your degree, and an interesting edge over all other applicants to most jobs.


Yes, I am serious.
 
Thanks for the posts, seems to confirm a direction I have already been pursuing. I looked into Americorps ~after my 2y degree, before my 4y. Volunteering is something I think I decided was important some time after I became socially engaged.

I just picked up 2 of the Tom Brown Jr. books on tracking, and I have been watching lots and lots of Netflix ever since I finished school. Education calls this the "discovery process" but I'm so sick of textbooks and rational vocabularies. Would rather just be a human being please, thanks!

I just never liked school, and I never liked cities. Feels like when you will yourself into 1 thing you hate, sometimes it's the masochistic thing to do that you proceed into other forms of misery. I just don't like who it has made me.

I hope with time it will get better! I think it will.

p.s.
The Costa Rican natives I met have a pretty happy outlook on life. Those guys have some serious machete skills!
 
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