Shortform #65 Work Work Work, jobs are nice | Thoughts about career and future things
I started a new job in October, it was about time, and I’ve greatly benefited from working again! I’m enjoying the work, the environment, the industry, and am looking for W2 fulltime positions (I’m contract at the moment) at the institution I’m at plus a similar few nearby. Turns out I quite like working at hospitals and medical institutions, even if I am still doing IT work.
I started a second job this week which is very different from my main job. Instead of working in person at a big institution doing technical things, I’m working remotely providing information validity assessments (i.e. fact checking) for a smaller yet still high impact organization. Very much so looking forward to doing more of such work at that org and further developing + formalizing my epistemic confidence / information validity assessment and evaluation methodologies.
Sometime during the last month or two as I adjusted to working full time again, I cut out more and more activities / actions / things from my life and so far have only been picking back up ones that truly spark joy and/or are very good for me. I feel overbooked, honestly, but I’m really enjoying everything I’m doing and am finding that my efficiency, competency, plus overall productivity all keep going up. I’m happy and doing quite well!
Other things I’m working to make more time for that I want to do that spark joy and are good for me:
public writing (like this, but also full posts too. these shortforms are good as basic things to do on a regular basis to keep my writing habit going and increase my self-legibility)
correspondence! I dropped almost all of my one on one or small group correspondence when I went into super job hunt mode and then especially when I started working again. There are quite a few people I want to get back to, and also reach out to, so I will.
Guild of the ROSE: a great organization, I am enjoying participating in the guild quite a bit and really like what we’re all doing there. Now to make just a wee more time for completing coursework, since I want to be more on top of that than I have been.
YouTube videos: I’ve wanted to make videos for awhile, and people these days keep telling me to make them already, so fine I’ll do that :) (it’ll be fun!)
Thoughts about the future and career things:
I am a very good technician, solving problems that involve hands on work plus a deep understanding of complex and highly abstract systems (and ideas) comes very easily to me. Any complex system that’s been thrown at me...I’ve been able to quickly understand what I needed to about it and fix problems with it. This is not limited to IT / technical complex systems problem solving, it seems to be near fully general in my experience. I think this is one of those areas where I have an intuitive leg up over others and my prowess at complex system problem solving should be factored into my career goals.
I love exploring ideas and am good at doing so, understanding even the most difficult and complicated concepts has never been an issue for me. I learn quickly and integrate new knowledge well, and seem to make connections between ideas or notice patterns that others miss. I have an insatiable appetite for novelty and exploration, knowledge and understand are power, and I want as much of both things as possible. I have to factor my love of knowledge, appetite for novelty, and capability of understanding into my career goals.
I struggle deeply and intensely if I am only doing one of the above two types of work, however. If I only perform applied or hands on work, I’ll soon feel stuck or bored, listless. I burn out and stop caring about fixing whatever it is I was fixing. If I only perform exploration, spend all my time learning or researching, but never apply it, then I drift off and become lost, soon becoming listless and nihilistic. For whatever reason, I seem to require performing two separate types of work at the same time to be personally and professionally satisfied, and stave off burn out and other worse things.
Given that complex system problem solving and idea exploration + development are two of my favorite areas of work that I have demonstrable competence at and gain fulfillment from, I need a career path that saturates me with both types of work on a regular basis.
Additionally, I require sufficiently challenging, interesting, and important problems to solve. The most important problem to solve is death, i.e. figuring out how to prevent or fix all possible causes of death. This is a sufficiently challenging, interesting, and important problem with many subsets of criteria matching problems to solve, and I am dedicating my career to solving such problems. But where to start?
Based on my career path criteria outlined above, my enjoyment and deep satisfaction from working in healthcare, and other things, I think the best plan of attack for me is to train for an MD and PhD: MD for the more applied technician sort of work, PhD for the more abstract research sort of work. Uncertain exactly which specializations I want to pursue, though for an MD several on this list look appealing. PhD, I’m inclined towards biogerontology, but by no means have firmly decided yet.
I am open to feedback, comments, suggestions, about all of these things.
Yay for writing! I enjoyed writing this post and am glad I’ve done so. Here’s to more writing to come :)
Earlier I gave myself some time to have one full album listening session (doing nothing but listening to music, no multi tasking) and listened to Caterina Barbieri’s “Patterns of Conscioussness” 2017 album, which was sublime and honestly very focusing and refining in significant ways. I unconsciously wrote most of this post during that listening session, because after the album finished I went to my computer and typed all this up.
While writing this post, I listened to the “Berlin Atonal: More Light” compilation from 2020. Not every song was my jam, but it was fun exploring, and I did find some songs I quite enjoyed.
Shortform #65 Work Work Work, jobs are nice | Thoughts about career and future things
I started a new job in October, it was about time, and I’ve greatly benefited from working again! I’m enjoying the work, the environment, the industry, and am looking for W2 fulltime positions (I’m contract at the moment) at the institution I’m at plus a similar few nearby. Turns out I quite like working at hospitals and medical institutions, even if I am still doing IT work.
I started a second job this week which is very different from my main job. Instead of working in person at a big institution doing technical things, I’m working remotely providing information validity assessments (i.e. fact checking) for a smaller yet still high impact organization. Very much so looking forward to doing more of such work at that org and further developing + formalizing my epistemic confidence / information validity assessment and evaluation methodologies.
Sometime during the last month or two as I adjusted to working full time again, I cut out more and more activities / actions / things from my life and so far have only been picking back up ones that truly spark joy and/or are very good for me. I feel overbooked, honestly, but I’m really enjoying everything I’m doing and am finding that my efficiency, competency, plus overall productivity all keep going up. I’m happy and doing quite well!
Other things I’m working to make more time for that I want to do that spark joy and are good for me:
public writing (like this, but also full posts too. these shortforms are good as basic things to do on a regular basis to keep my writing habit going and increase my self-legibility)
correspondence! I dropped almost all of my one on one or small group correspondence when I went into super job hunt mode and then especially when I started working again. There are quite a few people I want to get back to, and also reach out to, so I will.
Guild of the ROSE: a great organization, I am enjoying participating in the guild quite a bit and really like what we’re all doing there. Now to make just a wee more time for completing coursework, since I want to be more on top of that than I have been.
YouTube videos: I’ve wanted to make videos for awhile, and people these days keep telling me to make them already, so fine I’ll do that :) (it’ll be fun!)
Thoughts about the future and career things: I am a very good technician, solving problems that involve hands on work plus a deep understanding of complex and highly abstract systems (and ideas) comes very easily to me. Any complex system that’s been thrown at me...I’ve been able to quickly understand what I needed to about it and fix problems with it. This is not limited to IT / technical complex systems problem solving, it seems to be near fully general in my experience. I think this is one of those areas where I have an intuitive leg up over others and my prowess at complex system problem solving should be factored into my career goals.
I love exploring ideas and am good at doing so, understanding even the most difficult and complicated concepts has never been an issue for me. I learn quickly and integrate new knowledge well, and seem to make connections between ideas or notice patterns that others miss. I have an insatiable appetite for novelty and exploration, knowledge and understand are power, and I want as much of both things as possible. I have to factor my love of knowledge, appetite for novelty, and capability of understanding into my career goals.
I struggle deeply and intensely if I am only doing one of the above two types of work, however. If I only perform applied or hands on work, I’ll soon feel stuck or bored, listless. I burn out and stop caring about fixing whatever it is I was fixing. If I only perform exploration, spend all my time learning or researching, but never apply it, then I drift off and become lost, soon becoming listless and nihilistic. For whatever reason, I seem to require performing two separate types of work at the same time to be personally and professionally satisfied, and stave off burn out and other worse things.
Given that complex system problem solving and idea exploration + development are two of my favorite areas of work that I have demonstrable competence at and gain fulfillment from, I need a career path that saturates me with both types of work on a regular basis.
Additionally, I require sufficiently challenging, interesting, and important problems to solve. The most important problem to solve is death, i.e. figuring out how to prevent or fix all possible causes of death. This is a sufficiently challenging, interesting, and important problem with many subsets of criteria matching problems to solve, and I am dedicating my career to solving such problems. But where to start?
Based on my career path criteria outlined above, my enjoyment and deep satisfaction from working in healthcare, and other things, I think the best plan of attack for me is to train for an MD and PhD: MD for the more applied technician sort of work, PhD for the more abstract research sort of work. Uncertain exactly which specializations I want to pursue, though for an MD several on this list look appealing. PhD, I’m inclined towards biogerontology, but by no means have firmly decided yet.
I am open to feedback, comments, suggestions, about all of these things.
Yay for writing! I enjoyed writing this post and am glad I’ve done so. Here’s to more writing to come :)
Earlier I gave myself some time to have one full album listening session (doing nothing but listening to music, no multi tasking) and listened to Caterina Barbieri’s “Patterns of Conscioussness” 2017 album, which was sublime and honestly very focusing and refining in significant ways. I unconsciously wrote most of this post during that listening session, because after the album finished I went to my computer and typed all this up.
While writing this post, I listened to the “Berlin Atonal: More Light” compilation from 2020. Not every song was my jam, but it was fun exploring, and I did find some songs I quite enjoyed.
Be well!
Cheers,
Willa