[themodelplumber]

Sorry to hear it's been a tough decade...

Reading your post, I get the feeling that your professional potential is probably higher now in some sense that may not yet be clear.

For example maybe the previous years weren't exactly skill -development time in the building sense, but maybe they taught you to be even more of a ninja in terms of knowing what you don't want, or won't do. So your big-picture skills may have grown.

Your writing also points at a lot of other hidden strengths, probably newly-relevant strengths as well. For example you clearly have the ability to improvise. If so, a big question moving ahead is whether you are willing to embrace the convergence of somewhat orthogonal topics like "doing the chicken thing" and "documenting it so well this time that you become a subject matter expert in at least chicken runs, but likely also the processes you want to know well."

There will be lots of other questions here too, for example your journey is clearly that of an autodidact, so should it be kept more subjective and less conventional, to accommodate more of your latent passion and attention to your own drive? This option is rarely pointed out to people with such gifts.

Just some thoughts, good luck with whatever you decide to do.

[dezeiner]

I appreciate your positive framing.

I definitely do have hidden or not-so-hidden strengths, but they are all fairly abstract and rooted in emotionality. For example, I've often been told I have a strong ability to empathize, to understand the emotional journey of a UX, identify moments of friction & delight.

But I lack the structure to self-catalyze. I've tried for a year now to build something on my own and inevitably flounder due to an ignorant and scatterbrained approach to priorities, process, decision-making, etc, despite attempts to self-teach.

[themodelplumber]

yw. Those two last paragraphs are an interesting contrast. They're like "I have gifts that are really obvious, others even point it out, but also I suck at this other stuff I REALLY want to do."

The rational decision here would be to focus on the first no matter what, as that's what most people do in the career world. Those careers exist and pay money today. You can't bank on skills that don't exist, so if you go and call yourself a real-world builder and try to improvise there, you can count on lots of headwinds just due to basic career logic.

However it's a big clue that the two points of view also form two very clear dichotomies: Real - Abstract & Emotion - Logic. This usually means you will need to find a point of reconciliation before you can feel less locked up. It probably feels like your hands are tied right now due to lack of execution.

This is all wrapped in a clear ability to keep your discussion focused on subjective factors. IMO you may not like the idea, but self-analysis is a likely learning path that would accomplish all the goals you have written.

I would also hesitate to share the path with others until you have made meaningful progress, as there will be a tendency to suck all the vitality out of the room, so emotive is your gift, and so likely strong your desire to be demonstrative here.

You may even inadvertently frame meet-ups with others as your test, or as a time to demonstrate to them what you've become. In fact this will probably get you the opposite outcome from what you want, in terms of influencing people. We could describe your life as WTF Land rn, and most people do not want friends or family to have very strong memories of this time in their life. ;-)

So, it may be that you insist on Being the Builder who Builds Real Things, and that's that, and you develop a bunch of interesting coping habits along the way like people in these shoes do. Or you find a more creative way that syncs with your clear strengths and integrates the "duh" perspective that outsiders have shared with you.

Regardless I think it ought to be an interesting journey!