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| Posted on Thursday, December 03 @ 00:00:22 PST |
I could use some advice, fellow goons. Apologies if this is a bit of a vent, but Im fairly frustrated with my career situation, or lack thereof, and for dumping a wall of text - Ive tried to make it as readable and salient as possible.
To put a fine point on things, I have no idea of what I want to be doing professionally, or how to find it.
Educationwise, I have a Masters in a life science-related subject. I got the Masters two years into a PhD program, which after about five years of toiling, I made the very difficult decision to leave, due to the combination of overwhelming personal depression/anxiety, intensely disliking the location and school, and my thesis project being stuck in the mud to such a point that I was looking down the barrel of 3-4 more years of work, which I hated doing at the time.
In the first two years after leaving, I tried to stay close to academia and science. Tried my hand as a freelance editor, working remotely, found it possibly more soul crushing and solitary than academia. Taught at a college for a semester, which I found to be stressful and unrewarding, mentally and financially.
Eventually I wound up working in the beer industry. Craft beer is a passion that I developed along with my love of science, and to some degree the two complemented each other, so I figured why not work beer retail to make ends meet for a while - I was and am in a long term relationship, and working extremely late shifts with no weekends was a dealbreaker for us, so a job at a beer bottle shop was an acceptable alternative compared to working at a bar, since they have more limited hours.
This was probably the most content that Ive been professionally. I threw myself into the job, and since it was a small store and Im not the stupidest guy in the world, that paid off with more responsibilities and opportunities to do stuff like writing for the stores email blast (I got to nerd out about flavor chemistry, and genetic sequencing of yeasts and bacteria in esoteric beer styles). Whats more, I realized that I was in the company of likeminded people who I enjoyed spending time with, I found that I also enjoyed selling beer to discerning customers, and the social anxiety and depression that had played a part in ruining my doctoral research pretty much evaporated, thanks to the exposure therapy that is fast-paced retail.
Unfortunately, the long commute, relatively late working hours and lack of a weekend that aligned with my partners schedule started to wear thin, so I left to go work in sales for a beer distributor. I instantly felt some red flags the first few times going to the companys office (run down building, virtually everyone was very bro-y), but sort of chalked that up to the nature of the gig. On top of that, the bulk of the vast majority of the job was field work, so I honestly didnt really care.
The time I spent working in distribution/B2B sales was eye opening, to say the least. This was in a major US city, so I was selling beer to restaurants and bars of literally every stripe. I met a lot of interesting and varied characters - ranging from longtime bar owners working on a shoestring budget who wanted to serve something more interesting than Bud to extremely well run, critically acclaimed restauranteurs who knew their poo poo. I met some people who were passionate about having a cool and good beer program, but by and large most people I worked with were working with me because they basically had to.
After a while, I had my sales route down, with the ins and outs of dealing with the idiosyncrasies of my account base down, and the job got really loving boring and tiresome. I was phoning it in hardcore within eight months on the job, with absolutely zero consequence to me, except that I was bored as poo poo and drinking heavily.
At a certain point, it occurred to me that I could be applying the more empirically driven knowledge that I had from my time in the Ivory Tower, rather than just sales, especially with the alcohol industry tightening its belt. The company seemed to be getting more serious about their attempts at collecting data, so I pitched putting together some sort of analytics team, with myself involved.
I was surprised by how resoundingly my idea was rejected, so I started looking for other opportunities. I quit shortly afterwards when a position at a brewery opened up, as I instantly gelled with the more forward-thinking approach they had to conducting business. They were also fairly sanguine about the prospects of me applying some of my know-how to their operations.
Then COVID hit and I was let go, along with virtually everyone else at the brewery. I spent more time studying technical skills I knew I would need, building up to a semi-competent level in R and Python, learning about relational databases like SQL, and spending some time studying calculus, statistics and linear algebra through MOOCs and textbooks. Most of that was like pulling teeth for me - my problem with studying computer science is and always has been that while I appreciate the uses for these things, I find it excruciatingly boring to go through paint-by-the-numbers exercises and talk of theoretical applications (something I did not have a problem with when studying biology and chemistry, which I actively liked thinking about).
All the while Ive been looking around at potential opportunities, considering things like going back to school (either to finish my PhD in a program that I actually like, or to get some sort of professional certification in computer science), and I just hit a wall whenever I start looking in earnest.
Ive gleaned my criteria for a job from my experience, but it feels way too broad for me to find something with; Id like to do something that involves critical thinking, with a group of people who I dont actively dislike, for an organization that makes or does something that I vaguely give a poo poo about.
My question is basically, what do I do? Im not hoping for sounds like you should do [x] - though I am all ears for that sort of thing - but would really like some guidance on.... I dont know, how to set about finding something right for me, on both a practical and/or abstract level. Im really just totally at a loss and feeling rudderless.
Anyway, thanks for reading even if youve got nothing to add, I know went long here. Ill have a #5 with an extra order of fries and a Diet Coke.
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