Gray. Yeah, again.

So Dad called tonight, asked how things were going, and we got on the topic of job hunting. He asked what things I'd considered and suggested going back to school in psychology. He said, "I would hate for you to waste your base education." He said, "It would be nice for you to be interested in something again." He's right. It would be very nice. I'm just about out of energy for my current job. I got off the phone with him and cried for a bit (not a big deal; it's just something I do, automatically, when I seriously think about jobs and work and careers and all that--I thought I was supposed to be getting myself to believe a career isn't necessary, and now he's telling me that it is and I believe it, oh, so easily) and then looked up careers in psychology. I don't really want to do counseling anymore. If I wanted to do non-counseling, I'd have to get a Ph.D. And then I'd probably have to work in a university. The subject matter still interests me; the problem is that the only thing I want to do with it is learn it. Ideally, research would be great, but in a university with departmental politics and tenure tension and P.I. responsibilities would be far from ideal. I don't particularly want to be responsible for other people. I certainly don't want to have to be diplomatic and tactful, because as my performance at my current job evinces, I'm terrible at it.

Of course Dad is probably prejudiced in favor of my education because he paid for it. Also, as he said, if I'm going back to school, sooner would be better than later. Fall is the time for applications anyway. I'm grateful he didn't say something about wasting my talents or my time--and he didn't exactly say I was wasting my education. Though he got reasonably near it, possibly without meaning to.

So I don't want to do counseling. Mostly because it would involve a lot of people who are miserable for quite curable (mostly) reasons. I don't want to help people in general, I think. I want to help my kind of people. Who are they? Geeks and writers and gifted kids. I wish I wanted to teach; I could do something with that last group. I can't think of anything else to do with it without being wealthy. The other two groups don't need my help until I can open either TBC or a writer's retreat or commune (The Writer's Block?), and it's not so much that I'd like to help them as I'd like to be them. I could go back to school for either of those, too. I don't want to go back to school, especially not if I don't know what I'll do with the degree I get. I don't want to sit here at twenty-five with no ideas for my future, either. I'm starting to hear last year's refrain of I can't do this, but it's no more true now than it was then. Unless the thing I can't do is figure out what the hell I want.