hi can we request some advice and support for closeted systems at school trying to choose a career path?
please consider:
- practically no adults know about our plurality and for safety reasons it should stay this way. getting proper acommodations at school is impossible since we're selves-diagnosed and closeted.
- we are median, monoconscious and traumagenic (OSDD-1a) with parts that tend to come and go. that last part means making big life decisions without some form of regret hard
- the most common standpoints we have are "i don't want to work" (reasoning depends on the part), "space + the humanities somehow", "famous YouTuber or author".
- we have a factive who has an interest in his source's career, but feels like being a factive is cheating (this is linked to allegations that his source takes credit for others' work.) also the industry is highly toxic
- the whole "consider your interests/values/ikigai" feels very singlet-centric to us sadly
sorry if this sounds blunt; i am trying to get a lot of info across. i hope others in the same situation can find help and comfor here as we have
Hi! We went through a very similar problem when we were in school, and we’re sure there are lots of systems out there who are going through something similar! Choosing a career can be incredibly daunting, especially when you have multiple headmates who each want something different for your lives. We want to try and address each of your considerations specifically:
- You can express your worries about choosing the right career to an adult in your life without ever mentioning your plurality or your disorder! Even singlets can be indecisive, nervous, wishy washy, or uncertain when it comes to choosing a career, and you could absolutely come to a teacher, career planner, or guidance counselor with these concerns without ever mentioning your own multiplicity.
- We get this! But learning to live with the choices made by your system is an important lesson! We can’t change the past, so trying to take a deep breath, accept what you can’t change, and make adjustments for the things you can may help dealing with regret a bit easier.
- It’s really unfortunate that most people do in fact have to work for the majority of their lives in order to support themselves! If you’re interested in something that combines outer space and humanities, maybe look into scientific journalism, space journalism, or maybe even double majoring in physics/astronomy and literature/art in order to create some opportunities for your collective to combine these interests for a career down the line!
As far as YouTuber goes, it’s never too early to start drafting potential video essays and start planning out what life as a YouTuber may realistically look like for y’all. And as for being an author, you can start looking into what realistically goes into publishing a piece, working with editors, publishing companies, deadlines, and marketing teams, and what comes with being an author outside of just writing.
- It is not cheating at all for an introject to take inspiration or passion from their source in their system’s real life!! If the career choice this factive is interested in is something that seems appealing to the rest of your system, it is absolutely okay to seriously consider and look into it.
- We understand what you mean with “consider your interests” being singlet-centric, so we’d like to pitch you a different question to ask yourselves: Is there a job which your system members could each see themselves doing? What’s something that you don’t necessarily love, but that you certainly don’t hate? You don’t have to love your job - in fact, most people probably don’t. But finding a job that you A. Can each do comfortably, and B. Don’t hate, can make life easier for your whole collective!
Some other things we feel are worth mentioning:
- If you’re in high school, it is OKAY to take a few years of a break between high school and college while you all figure out a bit more about yourselves and what sort of education you’ll need to get a career you could really excel in. In the meantime, working an entry level job in food service or retail is fine! Our system was pressured into attending college right after high school, and that’s left us with a degree that we’ll never really use because we didn’t know what we wanted to do with our life at that point.
- Any job you can do that supports your system is good enough. It’s okay to not have any sort of big career aspirations! It’s okay to just work a job at the end of the day. Besides, chances are, you may not keep your very first job for the rest of your lives!
- Your career does NOT have to be your whole life/lives! It’s okay for your job to not mean all that much to you or make up a key part of your collective identity. You can fill your lives outside of work with things that really do mean a lot to you! You don’t have to live to work - it’s okay to work to live!
We hope this helps! For context, we are 28 years old and have been in the work force for 13 years now. Currently we are a line cook at a Jewish deli. Our dream career is being a librarian. We may never be able to realistically achieve that, so we’ve filled our lives with activities and interests outside of work to help take care of our own mental and emotional well-beings. And we work a job that we don’t hate, that we can physically accomplish, and that pays enough for us to live more or less comfortably.
Sorry this got so long, but this is a huge topic that we have a lot of thoughts on! Ultimately what’s helped us may not help y’all… but we hope that something here will at least be a little bit useful! We’re wishing you all the very best, no matter what your futures hold! 💕
