HI IQ INTJ wrote:
This is going to sound like a really strange and unlikely situation, but over the past 5 years or so I've become more and more interested in reading and learning to the point that I now have little interaction with people outside of work, and I am feeling more and more alienated in society. I would socialize a great deal if I could find people like me, but I just simply don't relate to most people, they don't relate to me, and I don't enjoy spending my time doing the things they do (for the most part). I don't have asperger's; I just don't enjoy socializing with most people.
After I graduated college a few years ago I got a seasonal job that paid really well and went through October. When that ended, instead of getting a different job or going on vacation or something like a normal person, I just sat and read probably six hours a day for 4 months. I think that was kind of the turning point for me where this passion for learning became more of an unhealthy obsession. The enjoyment I got from learning followed a sort of exponential curve as the more I learned, the more ideas I could connect, and the greater and grander picture I could create.
I've had a tendency to be like this my whole life as I'm kind of the quintessential INTJ, and I have an IQ of 145-150 (was tested at 147 last year). Even as a four-year-old all I wanted was to check out non-fiction books from the library. I did have a pretty normal childhood (socially) until I was about 12, and then I became more introverted as I fit in less and less with my peers. From the age of 15 onward I didn't really socialize at all outside of my team.
No one else in my family is like me at all, and I don't feel like I really have anyone to talk to. Even when I worked with engineers for a while, I couldn't really have the sorts of conversations with them I wanted to have. Most were fairly intelligent, but they just weren't very intellectually curious. They'd routinely be ignorant of things I took to be common knowledge, a fault on my part since I often forget not everyone was reading college biochemistry textbooks and such when they were 16, nor does everyone have a breadth of knowledge equivalent to six bachelor's degrees.
I thought about going into academia for a while and thought it was right for me through most of college, but I later realized academia and the path to becoming a tenured professor is more about jumping through hoops, kissing arse, and following the status quo than actually producing meaningful content, and I was turned off. I'm now working in a library doing pretty menial work. I don't mind it much, but I also know it is definitely not what I was made to do, and I am "wasting my life" at this job. I just don't really know what to do. I think the biggest hang up for me has been dealing with other people. I was a manager on a project once, and while I really enjoyed all the organizing and strategizing involved, I found myself mind-numbingly frustrated with my inferiors as they didn't seem capable of adding 2 + 2 even when I showed them and gave them explicit instruction in the simplest and most straightforward terms I was capable of. There was just too great of a disconnect in thinking between them and me. I can't really blame them too much I guess as I realized it was largely a result of inadequate communication skills on my part, but I just couldn't take it any more.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess I'm just feeling kind of lost right now and don't know what to do with my life. I'm very motivated, I just can't seem to find a career that works for me. And I'm sitting here now in my room and staring at literally 20 books on esoteric subjects scattered around me and am comparing it to what I'm doing for a living and what people in society value, and I'm realizing it's all kind of meaningless. I could spend the rest of my life doing this and it wouldn't mean a damn thing if I never produce anything, nor will it ever help me make anything of myself professionally unless I change something. I feel like a loser, and knowing half the drunks I went to school with are making double my salary doesn't help matters at all.
Anyone have any advice? Anyone have any resources? Anyone been there? I'm kind of lost right now. Any input is appreciated.
FYI, I'm 26.