An introvert muses about a fork.

I'm not at a fork in the road, but I think about the impending fork in the road a lot.  At some point, I will need to decide where I want my career to go.  This may end up being decided for me, if Darren needs help opening up his own counseling office.  But in the case that it's not, and I stay in the work force for 10+ years, I'll need to make a decision.

Since January 2009 I've been working directly with people, first with teens and teen moms, and now with foster families and the kids that come and go in their houses.  It was quite a stretch at first to do this (explanation of why below), but now I really do think I could continue to do it long-term.

However...

When Darren and I got engaged I had planned to go to graduate school.  That quickly fell to the wayside, and I am okay with that...at least I'm learning to be.  I had planned to get into neuropsychology, as most of my waking hours my last year as an undergrad were spent in the neuropsych lab at Purdue.  I absolutely fell in love with the research, and would have slept there in a cot had it been asked of me.

Research type work isn't necessarily oriented around human interaction.  That was part of the appeal to me.  I treasure my friends and family, but I could spend days without talking to anyone and not feel isolated.  To interact with people is not energizing for me (like it is for an extrovert like Darren), I come away happy, but drained and physically tired, whether the event was Sunday church, Thanksgiving, or a weekend with family.  Sometimes after a day (or few days) at work where I was around people a lot, I have to ask Darren and Tallie not to touch me because it almost physically hurts to be touched.  I try not to let it get to that point, but I say this just to emphasize how much interacting with people can take its toll on my introverted side.

I was almost always exhausted when we worked in Residential.  A lot of that was sleep deprivation from the job and my girls' infancies.  Part of it was because I was an introvert working with people day and night, and I didn't have much chance to get away for breathing time alone.  At my current position there are not people in my face 24/7, and I can sort of portion out my 'people time'.  I learned a lot during my time in residential about how to deal with my introversion, and this current position lets me continue to work on that, while requiring less stretching on my part.

So, despite my severe introversion, I have grown to a point where I don't think it is necessarily noticeable to others, and it is definitely manageable on my end.  I now realize that if God asked me to continue working directly with people for the rest of my life that I could do it fairly easily.

But I love research.  I LOVE research.  I can get lost in daydreams of working in labs on small, seemingly insignificant particles of research in neuropsych, and thoroughly enjoying myself.  I remember one early morning about 3am after working for weeks on a project with a grad student, putting the data I had gathered and entered into a formula and seeing that formula make a chart.  I remember thinking I was going to cry from joy in that nasty dark little computer lab under the Math building at Purdue.  All that work had created a chart.  Tons of chaotic data simplified into a beautiful, comprehensible chart, understandable by all.  That, my friends, is a fun time in my book :)

I may not be the one that determines which way I go at the fork in the road of my career.  God has told Darren and I next to nothing about what is next after he is done at school.  But, if God does give me the grace to make this decision for myself, there will be a LOT of prayer and contemplation involved.

For now, I am having an absolute blast in my current job.  I love my boss and co-workers and the families that I work with are top-of-the-line and in it for the right reasons.  Who knows what the future holds, but it's fun to think about anyway!