Detangling threads

What do I want in a job? Do I even want a job? And what are all the pieces that go into an answer?

I want to have some occupation -- I mean, some kind of obligation that makes me get up and do something. Without some obligation, I won't. I mean, I've got plenty of interesting books I haven't read yet; in a sense it would be fun just to sit home and read them all. But without some kind of external obligation, I'll just browse Twitter and drink. Or something else equally useless. So I need to have some kind of work to structure my day.

Also having an income would be nice.

My mom is getting old and I'd like to live within driving distance of her. I wouldn't even (necessarily) mind living in her home, if it could help her out. (I could never have said this while my father was still alive, because I couldn't have lived with him.) 

I want to travel. The idea of living abroad is still enticing, though less so as I get older. Yes, this contradicts what I just said about staying near my mom.

While we're listing geographical contradictions, I'd also like to live closer to Marie. Maybe not actually with her in the same apartment, or at least not yet. But it would be nice to be a lot closer than the thousand-plus miles that separate us today.

I'd like work that involves figuring things out.

I'd like work that trades on my half-baked skill in working with people, finding ways through bureaucracy, talking and talking until I can get what I want.

I'd also like work that is occasionally dull and plodding, when I just have to crank through the routine work of compiling graphs or reports. Some days I'm really not firing on all cylinders. I'm hungover, or I stayed up too late reading, or I'm just in "Mood 2" for whatever reason. And on those days it helps if I can just sit at my desk and talk to nobody and spend all day cranking out some insanely complex report by hand. 

Most of the jobs I've held in the last twenty or thirty years (or more) have included at least some tasks that meet this last description. Occasionally people ask me why I don't automate them, and I (truthfully) say I don't know how. Also they are so boring that nobody else ever automates them for me. Technically this is called a "win-win."

I'd like it if someone would compel me to write up a few ideas I've had that I've had over the years and never heard from anyone else: some of them related to the professional work I've done in the last twenty years, some of them related to speculations about the natural human Good (see, e.g., this post and a few that followed in the next couple of months), and some about all kinds of different topics. I don't expect to get paid for any of this last category of work, but I wish somebody would make me do it anyway.

Is there more? Probably. Is any of it consistent with what I've already written? Probably not.

Maybe later.