#personal stuff tag

I’ve been having a minor existential crisis lately about work: the work I'm currently doing, versus work I might be capable of doing, versus work I would like doing. I’ve been hopelessly bored with work for my entire adult life. Part of that is just the nature of doing the same job day in and day out, of course. But the further I get into my workforce years, the more I’m wondering if I semi-intentionally sabotaged myself by choosing career paths that I knew would be “safe” rather than intellectually challenging. 

In other words, my tendency to lowball/downplay myself, combined with my rampant fears of failing, embarrassing myself, disappointing managers, losing a job, etc all steered me toward work I knew I could do pretty easily. But now I’m dealing with the flip side: going out of my mind with boredom. 

Unfortunately, knowing that I might be happier, or at least less bored, in a more challenging career doesn’t help much in the way of figuring out what said career might be. I’m still facing the same problem I did in my college days: knowing I’m not well suited for any of the typical go-to career paths like law, medicine, teaching, or business (dealing with clients, patients, students, or boardroom meetings would leave my introverted self a shriveled husk), but simultaneously having trouble identifying what would be a good fit. 

On the plus side, Sis and I are making some good strides in our real estate investing endeavors. In the past several weeks we’ve picked a real estate agent, started viewing properties, and reached out to some local property management companies. So far we haven’t seen any houses we’re 100% sold on purchasing, but a couple have come pretty close. It’s all about finding a property that’s within our budget, but still in decent enough shape (and in a decent enough area) to attract good tenants. The very first house we looked at a couple weekends ago had bullet holes in the windows. As we stepped out of the car, I half-jokingly asked the agent, “Are we going to get shot?”

“Nah, not on Sunday,” she said.