This page explains things I liked doing, had a glimmer of passion for and perhaps weren't exploited, or things that i have been good at or complimented on.  Objective is to understand what I should have done, or could do now to make use of my life.

  1. Things I had glimmers of interest in when I was a kid.
    1. Geology:  I had a spark of interest for Geology when I was at school.  Maps of geography seemed interesting but not fascinating.. whereas geology was fascinating.  I liked the idea of going to obscure places and looking at rocks like I did at Aberporth when I was a kid I guess.   (This probably explains some of my interest in Environmental Science too.. but I quite often skipped the field trips as too basic..) Geological Maps did fascinate me, and I remember asking for a geological map of the UK for my birthday.. as well as reading about geologists hammers and really wanting one of those too.  I never got any of these things.. again a thing that pissed me off about living in a small town I'm sure my parents looked in the local WHsmiths and then gave up...
    2. Town Planning:   The actual jobs involved in this fascinated me, but everytime someone mentioned the job title (or my mother picked up on it before the idea had really grown in my mind) it ran me cold.  It just seemed so tedious as a job title but so fascinating as a set of things to do.. like make roads (the least interesting) plan how people live and the overall feel of the town.  I still have a fascination for this.. including phoning up and asking about a town centre management job.. that manifests in a 'how can you possibly plan a town area without knowing it intimately' attitude to current town plans and proposing new solutions.  Like so many things though, it is the people with ahem focussed (i say 'plodding' interest and training that get to do the fun stuff.
    3. Big journeys:  I often thought of things like 'lands end to john o'groats in a C5' and other schemes, but they were never seen as serious by parents or teachers.. until they were done by other people and we were congratulated on 'having a good idea after all'.  Oh how that has been the pattern in my life!
    4. Planning Cycle rides.  I really like this and used to go out for several hours on my own.. sometimes with friends but they never want
    5. Music - I learnt the violin when I was younger but was very sensitive to the fact that it made me stand out as different in a conformist way.  I didn't really enjoy being with the passionless others that were in music (music for me is about passion and emotion first and some of the people in the Orchestra were so dull.   I went on from this to try to learn other things - but was really pushed into them by my  parents rather than being asked what I wanted to do or why I liked something - then I liked alternative music and really got into it.  Again it set me apart but in a much cooler way.  When later I wanted to form a band at school, the people who wanted to be in it too were so passionless and boring that we never did get it together - I wanted a noisy band, they wanted it to be less than noisy.   I think I was at the wrong school in the wrong sort of town for sure.
    6. English Literature - I really liked English Literature and had an excellent teacher who could see my interest and had the same.  
    7. Medical Stuff - I used to read and read the Family health Book and had a very wide household level knowledge of all sorts of diseases and conditions.  I still wonder why my teachers didn't find out about this, or why I didn't build on the knowledge in my schoolwork.. This was definitely a case where my knowledge dissolved in order to keep pace (backwards) with the rest of the schoolwork - we didn't have anything about disease and medical conditions at all in our science lessons - so that knowledge and interest was wasted...Funny that I was good at science, interested and fascinated by disease, had a mother who was a nurse and no-one thought 'I wonder if he is interested in being a doctor?' Shame that school can dissolve expertise rather than enhance it.
  2. Things I get complimented on:
    1. Being funny and either triggering or completing great ideas for little comedy sketches
    2. Being funny with impressions - not of celebs but of people with a particular state of mind (ahem is this 'acting', darling?)
    3. Being able to write, especially scathing opinions
    4. Being opinionated and ready to debate things strongly
    5. Being 'intelligent' (good), being 'analytical' (can be bad).
    6. Being good at singing (only really Kevin and I can never be sure that he is not just being 'positive')
    7. Complimenting others... I will tell people if they are good at something, or if an idea is good and enthuse about it (this is how I lose girlfriends of course)
    8. Organising things, when I am properly motivated to achieve them.
    9. Having ideas
  3. Things people suggest that I would be good at (even though they don't necessarily know what is involved in those jobs)
    1. Columnist
    2. PR person
    3. Gigolo (comes up very often)
    4. Consultant - usually business, but sometimes marketing.
  4. Things I annoy other people with
    1. Knowing and  having opinions on gender situations with a masculinist viewpoint.  Arguing it, then being told 'you don't have stats' then I go out and get them.  People hate this.  Funny that when someone else (an 'expert') says the same things they agree!
    2. Not taking status as an indicator of knowledge on a subject - if people are high status and they say something I think is wrong, I will challenge it a little.
    3. Trying to get them to say somethign positive about me - I can list whole lists of things I have done, people will wait until the end and then say 'alh but you haven't finished your bathroom' or some other inanity - funny that deep down they want me to work on my bathroom rather than my career or other things - people are so so unsupportive.