What am I passionate about?

Obviously, not for keeping up a blog.

Well, I get a bit manic about things.  Intensely focused on something until it breaks under the weight, after which I tend to cut it off entirely for a while, if not permanently.  I suspect this is not so much an INTP thing as a me-thing.  Also, I admit that I checked my blog-stats occasionally, and seeing no hits but my own, I think I got a bit tired of tap-dancing in an empty room.  If I view it a bit more as therapy, maybe I'll have better luck keeping my strength up.

I am still at the same job.  Still.  I was offered a permanent position, while my very good friend, the guy who brought me in, was not.  I kind of wish it had been the other way around.  I had done a couple more interviews, and gotten a bit of a bite for a very cool-sounding company that makes information presentation software.  Unfortunately, they were offering only 2/3 of my present salary, and that included the yearly bonus at its maximum.  I had to pass, and did not finish out the interview process.  I think about them often though.

So I am back to being all weepy and moan-y about my current job.  I was fine for a while, with all the time off for the holidays, and a couple of minor successes, but now I can see the expanse of ocean in front of me and I am seizing up.  So, once again, I am turning inward to try and figure things out.  I have heard many times that one's job should be a joy and a delight, that I should love doing it, and all that crap.(1)  I think that I have approached this in the past, but I certainly have never achieved it. 

I may have mentioned it before, but a pretty standard list of INTP-friendly careers goes like this:
Mathematician
College Professor
Biological Scientist
Philosopher
Archaeologist
Physicist
Psychologist
Lawyer
Chemical Scientist
... and so forth.

Great!  I love the idea of almost any of these, except maybe the biological/psych ones.  Yet what do these all have in common?  How about four to seven years of school, full time?  Yep.  There are areas out there that are interesting to me: for example, I just found out about copy editing.  I would probably be a great copy editor, because I am generally very good with the language and with punctuation (though I tend to be a bit florid with each).  So let's see... how much does a copy editor make per year?   Indeed.com says: $35,000.  Ugh.  Well I guess that is out. 

So that's the next point.  I can understand taking a salary hit to go to a different field, but I can't take too great of a hit.  I have bills to pay, a mortgage, a daughter who needs to go to college some day(2).  Handcuffs, in a way.

So what am I passionate about?  What would make my job a pleasure every day?  I can start with a couple of things that I am not passionate about: I have zero interest in the process of business (sales orders, invoices, delivery tickets, inventory, and all the rest of it) - less than zero, I have negative interest.  Secondly, I have declining interest in software testing.  It just doesn't float my boat much any more, not that it ever really did to begin with, but it is just getting less tolerable as I get older, and my tastes change.  For example, while I love thinking about things, I more and more just want to think about the things that I want to think about (not someone else's problems).  My attention to detail seems to be suffering, though that may be tied to this job.

As a typical INTP, I have interests all over the map: astrophysics, Latin, electronics, boardgames, the Constitution, trout, history, the English language, early Christianity, crows, the Russian Revolution, and so on.   I have told my wife many times that the only thing I am actually good at in this world is Jeopardy!.  I read tons, online and off.  I'm a smart guy, how do I make money off that?


(1)  Do garbagemen and sewer workers love their jobs?  I mean, there are some jobs that nobody wants, right?  Waiters?  Working for the DMV?
(2)  She is not yet six years old, which I understand is too early to have personality traits locked down; but I am pretty certain she is going to be some sort of E.