I wonder what kind of results you would get if you took the test again. One of the things I found interesting about our products was that the one that was supposed to be a reflection of our more permanent inclinations (as opposed to a measurement of behaviors) actually *changed* for me over the course of a few years. Some things stayed the same, but others were much different. All the changes made sense when I sat and thought about them, but I wasn't expecting them.

I also found that the 'proof' that the product worked better than a Cosmo quiz was rather slim. The statistics we had to back up our stuff were all self-referential. I know there's a more official word for it but I can't think of what it is. In any case, if you scored in the 5th percentile of X, all that really showed was that you scored in the 5th percentile. There was no research backing up the claims that people in the 5th percentile were more likely to succeed at Y - it was more just based on common sense. I figured out that our formulas calculating some percentiles had been wrong for at least 8 years!

I hope you can stop feeling bad about not taking care of things in 2001. It's easy to look back and see how obvious it was that we should have done this or that, but it wasn't obvious to us then. If it was and if we had been in a position to do it, we would have. You did what made sense at the time.

You aren't *that* old and things can always get better. The job thing sounds like it has been a big issue for you for a while now. Have you tried interviewing elsewhere, just to see if the grass is greener and to reassure yourself that you have options and are simply choosing to stay? Still no word from your friend?

My day was ... a day. It's extremely horrifying to see what I have forgotten. It's been four years since I've worked in this kind of technical environment. It's embarrassing to have someone standing over your shoulder telling you to do something pretty simple and not remember how! I don't think it sounds that good to say 'oh wow, it's been a long time,' but I did anyway!

I'm also in this quandary because they want me to do something repetitive. I know I could automate it, but I've never automated this kind of thing before and the deadline is tight - so I am probably going to go with the repetitive process, but I feel like I am SO SLOW.

Also, I don't like working. I just don't like it. I don't like being trapped in an office. This is the first time I have not had my own office since 2002. I don't have a window. I'm only part time, so whatever - but I really hope I find some alternative sources of income by the summer so I can work from home on my patio.

Selling and introversion maybe don't go together, but going back to something that is very much like a day job really makes me feel like I can overcome that...