My Career Crossroads: a Pandemic-forced Mid-Life Crisis. Part 6: Answers?

In my last post I talked about the first step in overcoming and/or integrating my weaknesses so that they become strengths. I also promised at the end of that post that I would soon make another one about the next steps, and while the answer is still probably “get a therapist”, since that’s not currently an option, I’ve been doing the best I can otherwise. I’ve been reading up, listening to podcasts and lectures, doing some research (layman research, granted, but still), and listening to feedback on the stuff I’ve written over the past month. And do you know what the true answer I’ve found is?

Nothing.

And I don’t mean nothing like, “I haven’t found it yet,” I think the actual answer isn’t out there. Or at least, it’s not something simple where I can say, “This are the things I need to do to find true happiness, and these are the obstacles in the way, now let’s tackle them all and that’s my life’s work.”

Part of Me

After last night’s venting session, I got thinking about the game Celeste, since apparently all my epiphanies come from video games now. In case you don’t know anything about it, Celeste is a platforming game where you play as Madeline, a young woman who has made it a personal goal to climb Mt. Celeste (based on an actual mountain in British Columbia). The difficulty level is stupidly hard (unless you turn on Assist Mode), but the game is always supportive and encouraging, which is a nice breath of fresh air from games that are either too easy, or mock you for not being an expert (for example, one of the loading screens states “Be proud of your death count! The more you die, the more you’re learning. Keep going!”).

My Career Crossroads: a Pandemic-forced Mid-Life Crisis. Part 5: Apathy

Surprise! You thought this series was over until I was gainfully re-employed! Turns out I’ve got more to say!

Job hunting has, of course, been pretty difficult, for many reasons (bad job market thanks to pandemic, lack of currently marketable skillsets, basically everything I’ve already written in this blog series, etc.). But through it all I’ve been grappling with a problem that has increased the difficulty exponentially. I don’t know how widespread this issue is, but it’s one I’ve been dealing with for far longer than just this job search, though its manifestation here makes it more crucial that I push through it. And that issue is this:

I just don’t care.