Venting It feels like the world was built against me

[Triangle]

For as long as I can remember I've found the world to be very unintuitive and contrary to myself... The things that are popular are always the things I couldn't care for, while the things I liked were never liked by anybody around me. The things other people want are always things I don't, to the point where things that people consider universal human nature just don't apply to me, and people think something is wrong with me. I don't like to eat around others and consider mealtime to be a private time to relax, but others consider it to be a social time and decide I'm "wrong" instead of just accepting that people can have different preferences.

I'm worried for my future because it seems like there is no career out there where I can thrive. My personality is that I excel when I work in solitude, am able to be an individual, and can do a variety of different things from different fields. But this directly contradicts what... just about 100% of careers want from you. Everything involves working as a team, being empathetic, and specialization, which are the exact things that go against what's natural and enjoyable for me. It really bothered me when I found out that science is no longer the stereotypical solitary field for nerds as I had envisioned as a young child. The only jobs that seem to allow you to work alone tend to be physical labor, and I just don't have the physical health or a large enough build to even begin to do that. Even among introverts, I feel like I have a disadvantage. Most introverts seem to be sensitive people who can easily understand and care about others, and that just isn't me. I'm not a cruel, rude, or mean person (which I worry people will judge me as), but I simply don't easily relate to others or feel their feelings myself, even if I try to be polite and nice.

I get that socializing is a skill that can be developed, but what cannot change is that my natural personality is one where I thrive when I can do things on my own. Whether or not I could work in a team isn't what I care about, I just feel like the world wants me to always be faking it and never be able to succeed AND be myself. It feels awfully unfair that this huge facet of who I am has to be denied and forced into hiding just because I'm not good at one thing. You can be bad at drawing, mathematics, writing, science, history, and just about anything else, but I can't find a career which would allow me to be myself even though I'm fairly good at all those other things, just because I'm not good with conversation. It's one thing, but the world is so stubbornly intolerant of letting me live because of it.

I took an online career test that's supposed to come up with many possibilities for things you would be good at, but it ended up finding "1 career in 1 field" out of all the ones in its database "based on 15+ years of experience profiling 1200+ careers." It didn't tell me what the one thing was, it wanted me to pay for my results (in my case, my singular result). The images show my preview results:

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

You are so effing articulate.

In writing, if not in conversation.

 

[Triangle]

You are so effing articulate.

In writing, if not in conversation.

Thank you... I'm a lot better in writing because I have time to think about word choice/alternate phrasings, and because I can plan out the main idea of a message. In conversation you have fractions of a second to think of your intended response, and mentally phrase a message, and be mindful of your tone of voice/body language, and actually execute all this, AND process what other people say, and it's hard to juggle all that so quickly. I also just struggle to see the point of "how are you today? nice weather!" type conversations because even though I can theoretically understand that other people get gratification from simple interactions, I don't personally feel any fulfillment—it feels weird and like a waste of time.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

I'm am extrovert and a normie, and I much prefer forums to irl communication, for many of the reasons you mentioned.

Lots of people work remotely. Consultants come to mind. Transcriptionists. Online customer service reps.

Writers can work alone, then interact with editors, etc. online. I don't bullshit when I say you're an excellent writer. I have extensive education in writing and editing. You could blog, you could submit articles to online and print journals, magazines, and publishers.

Thinking creatively, I wonder what job opportunities there are for the deaf that don't limit them to the deaf community.

 

[Triangle]

I'm am extrovert and a normie, and I much prefer forums to irl communication, for many of the reasons you mentioned.

Lots of people work remotely. Consultants come to mind. Transcriptionists. Online customer service reps.

Writers can work alone, then interact with editors, etc. online. I don't bullshit when I say you're an excellent writer. I have extensive education in writing and editing. You could blog, you could submit articles to online and print journals, magazines, and publishers.

Thinking creatively, I wonder what job opportunities there are for the deaf that don't limit them to the deaf community.

I've thought about remote writing jobs, but I'm just concerned about having a reliable salary and getting into the jobs. I don't have any connections or experience so I imagine it'd be difficult to get yourself on the stage and get hired.

I've never thought about jobs for the deaf. That's an interesting thing to think about. Where I live, those who are obviously and significantly physically impaired usually don't seem to have to worry about that because it's a rather affluent area with very low violent crime, and there's enough money around to support them. Sometimes I've wondered how far I could get if I feigned muteness for a day, and the ways I could creatively get around that without talking.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

I've thought about remote writing jobs, but I'm just concerned about having a reliable salary and getting into the jobs. I don't have any connections or experience so I imagine it'd be difficult to get yourself on the stage and get hired.

I hear you. If you treat as a hobby, it's fun. If it turns into a job, it's a boon. But if you're only imagining, you've already imagined yourself right out of any opportunities you might uncover.

Just the humble opinion of a random person on the internet.

 

[Ermitão]

I feel very much like you, am also an introvert and my experience that socializing is learnable skill just to a certain point, you can fake it but wouldn't necessarily make it, we are still individuals that got individual carateristics, and some have better social skills than others. Theres an sociologic factor in who we are but theres an ontologic factor too and no one can deny that. Now about "universal human nature", thats just an idealization that control our lifes, Max Stirner on his book " The Ego and Its Own" talks exactly about that on beggining, the thing is tha we don't have to let this idealization to spook us, we as individuals should control the ideas and not vice versa.