Hi Hvert,

Well, I'm officially "moderately depressed." My therapist gave me a test, and that's where I came out. I then announced to my piano teacher that I'm officially depressed, and he said, "yeah, I know." So it goes.

Your trip sounds like it was fun! Museums and walking around sound great. I get why you might feel like you're wasting time in the hotel room... because you're in a new place with a limited amount of time. That's how I've felt in the past anyway... like, why waste the time and money to travel to another state/country, and then do nothing but spend the day napping in the hotel? I can do that much more cheaply at home! It's almost like you need to squish as much as you can into the limited time you have. (Though I still like to go back and rest in the room, I kind of need that down time to function, or I get really grumpy and bratty!)

The personality stuff is really weird, I think. It almost feels like you need to find a system that works for you. I love reading about myers-briggs, but I always test all over the place... particularly on the "thinking-feeling" scale and the "judging-perceiving" (I think that was it?) scale. (Super strong introvert and Intuitive though!). I think for me, maybe I'm just near enough to the middle of those scales that I'm not clearly one or the other... and that's ok. But it makes the whole system less useful for me, personally, I guess.

I wonder if you're like that with some of the tests? With the right-left brain stuff, for example.... isn't it possible to be pretty well-balanced? We had to do a test like that for work awhile ago - the Herman Brain Dominance (I may have the name wrong or mispelled) - hopefully that's not the one you worked for as it was a little annoying (a lot of the questions felt like they were asking, "hey do you do this creative thing?" and if you said yes, they then said, "guess what! You are creative!" )

When we took it, they did say that it was possible for people to be equally balanced between all FOUR quadrants of their brain! There was a special name for those people... which I can't remember. But basically it meant that they were equally comfortable with all types of thinking (maybe holistic thinkers?) It was sold to us as a good thing

Anyway, I do think it's hard for us (any of us) to really know ourselves, though the tests are fun and sometimes interesting. Some people worry about it less, but it's one of those things I just find fascinating and get easily caught up in!

As for work. Well, yup, I have some stuff to do now. I'm not loving it. Our team is becoming much more externally focused (we previously just did work for other groups in our large company, now we're actually selling ourselves to other companies!). It kind of sucks, in a way, because we're becoming like an agency... and my boss loves that, but I don't. I very specifically did not apply to any agencies when I was looking for jobs, because I didn't really want to do that type of work (lots of travel). Now, he's got me more or less on THREE projects - trying to get up to speed on two very different industries, 3 companies, and preparing for us to go meet up with people from these companies to try to understand what kinds of problems their having and how our company can help in a big, huge, holistic way.

I'm sure it's interesting for some people, but not what I signed up for and not what I was hoping to do right now. And the travel will seriously just drive me up the wall, although it sounds like we may not need to do that - he's going to see if we can sell some of us staying local and participating via a teleconferencing room, which would reduce costs (and stress!).

So, we'll see. I think my job in these bigger meetings right now is essentially going to be a glorified secretary, which is not helping my sense of hopelessness about life! He wanted to bring someone else to the meetings to help with the brainstorming aspect, and I suggested we bring someone else to take notes, and let ME help with the brainstorming, and he actually said to me that... "well, I don't know what kind of notes everyone else takes... I want to make sure we have someone who I know can take good notes."

Seriously. I have a master's degree. From a really good school. And had a fellowship to get it. And, this is what my career has been reduced to. Praise for my amazing note-taking skills? Can I just pause and sob for a second here? (Oh I wish I was joking, seriously!!!)

So, that's work. Busy, but not good busy. Yeah, I know... I need to start trying to pull together my old work and make up something that can pass as a portfolio. Oy.

Oh, and nope... I haven't heard anything from the other group. It's kind of silly. I think my friend's friend over there has actually had the baby and is off on maternity leave now, so I'm kind of giving up on that. If, miraculously, somebody over there gets in touch with me, that would be fantastic, but at this point, I can't really afford to hold my breath any longer.

I did sign up for a Craftsy class, right before I got all this new work dumped on me! It was on sale, and it's to sew knits! But I haven't done anything with it yet. I'd like to though... knits... t-shirts... yoga pants... anything stretchy seems so comfortable. I've never sewn anything stretchy and it seems a little intimidating, so hopefully it's good. I'd LOVE to do something in person, but haven't seen anything yet that looks good.

And, wow! Your day sounds amazing... that's *awesome* that you have so many great opportunities suddenly popping up! Amazing! I hope some of these opportunities work out, and help you get a bunch of better contracts!