Anyway, I promised to start my journey of self-exploration with a frank and honest list of things I like to do, so here goes.
BTW, a friend of mine and one of the 3-4 readers of this blog, suggested a taxonomy for activities. That's a great idea and I actually have a source for that, but we'll get to that later. Right now, I'm just thinking free form. Taxonomies are for after the brainstorm.
To get the ball rolling, I'm going to quote from a book that just arrived yesterday. It's What Color is Your Parachute, 2011 Edition and it's an invaluable resource for anyone who's looking for a job or considering a career change or, like me, trying to figure out what he wants ultimately to do. Highly recommended. I've only read through the first couple of chapters, yet I came across this little gem:
Story #3: A job hunter was lamenting to me about the fact that she had never enjoyed anything she had ever done, so how could she now identify what her favorite anything was - in her search for her passion and mission in life? I answered her, "Unless you have been in extreme depression all your life, it's simply impossible that you haven't ever enjoyed yourself during all the forty-one years you've been here on earth. What is possible, and indeed almost certain, is that you've never noticed because you were never taught to pay any attention to, what exactly you were doing -- what tasks you were doing, what skills you were using -- when you were most enjoying yourself."
This struck a chord with me. There's an awareness factor at play here that I probably suck at. I tend to stay at jobs far longer than I should, so I can't even tell when I'm miserable, let alone happy. Still, it's something to think about.
Without further ado, Things that I've enjoyed:
- Analyzing raw data. Boy, sounds like big fun, huh? But there's something extremely satisfying about taking raw data and having it whisper its secrets to you. Every data set knows something you don't (and probably should).
- Presenting data analysis.I also really like streamlining data, boiling it down to its basic parts, and presenting it so that even the most thick-headed CEO or dim-witted sales rep gets it.
- Listening. I enjoy turning off my own pre-conclusions and just listening to hear, really hear, what someone is saying. Often it has nothing to do with the words coming out of their mouth. This is just another form of data collection, I guess.
- Designing user interfaces. I don't know why I like this so much. I've no idea whether I'm good at it. But I will spend literally hours crafting a UI that looks nice and flows smoothly, at least to my eyes.
- Baking. Yep, I like to cook and I like baking most of all. (Ace of Cakes is another guilty pleasure, but I stay away from Cake Boss because I find him obnoxious and his accent makes my skin crawl.) My daughter's birthday is coming up and she wants a yellow cake with chocolate icing on the top decorated with a unicorn.
- Writing. Well, maybe not the act of writing. Writing is painful. It's like working out a mental muscle that's sore and tired all the time. But I enjoy having written. If I can write something good, put it down for a couple of days to gain some distance, and then come back to it and say "yep, that still works", that's a good feeling. The distance between effort and gratification can be chasmic sometimes, though. And, no, I have no compunction about inventing words. You know what I meant.
- Teaching. I'm not sure how much of this is my inherent control-freakness, but I enjoy the challenge of translating data from my mental model to someone else's. It's very gratifying to see the lights suddenly come on and have someone become fluent in a new concept. It's also amazing to me how other people's minds work -- they're often so different from my own.
I'm tempted to keep going, talking about what these have in common, but I think this post has gone on far too long already.
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