Got a Match?

Ever curious, I have to ask why the job search engines think that I'm a prime candidate for meat-cutting jobs. On the whole, they're pretty good at matching me with some of the jobs out there. But these odd results, including the occasional butchery, will probably continue.

My exciting and dread-inducing foray into job hunting has also included such job referrals such as a graffiti removal manager as well as the aforementioned meat-jobs. This one came from an actual person who was probably using the search engines. Reminds me of the involved set of tests that I took in college to gauge my aptitudes. After a grueling day and a half, two obvious career paths were revealed: mining engineer or clown. Sadly, I've only pursued the clown option, as an amateur at that.

I'm thinking a lot about matching and decisions right now. Databases yield matches based on equations that must be mind-numbingly esoteric. They're just trying to arrive at a sensible match, a helpful direction. A match is not a decision, just an element of it.

Search engines, Jobs, Friends, Love, are all matches that hinge on how appropriate they are in your life. Thankfully, some matches require no decision. That's one of the magic things about living, that moment, that thing, that person that is right as rain. A precious few elements of my life have been gifts beyond my comprehension, mysteries. A good life thankfully isn't solely yoked to reason.

But I do know that a match becomes a relationship and matters will arise that require clear-eyed decisions. How do I arrive at the decisions about the most important things in my life? I'm constantly tugged between magical and practical decision making, thinking styles. Magical decisions, or more kindly and accurately, wishful thinking has often won the day. Not the best way of sustaining a well-grounded life.

I have suffered because I did not do the necessary work to make good decisions. I thought that decisions should be breezy, neat and not caked in grime.

My thinking has typically been stunted by impatience and fear about the exploration that deliberation requires. I've indulged in imagination as a substitute for thinking. My fetish for the clean result has warped how I've arrived at a decision. Rather than arriving, I'd teleport to the result. Relying on a technology that doesn't exist is at best optimistic. Might as well don a pair of pointy ears and intone "Live well and prosper" while I'm at it. A good life can be diminished by overreaching faith in a good life.

I am all for imagination, well-mannered or fevered. Always thought that nightmares were kind of cool. But substituting imagining when I needed the pedantic results of thinking has not a help to me. Thinking, decision-making, matching, is a process, a long walk with a sketchy map.

I am working as diligently as I can to put one foot in front of the other, make sure that I'm on the right path and arrive in the place that is true to me. The funny thing is that this insistence on plodding along means that I have made more missteps than I'm accustomed to. That's okay. I've learned that you just back up, adjust direction and move forward based on the best read that you've got. Kindergarten stuff, but it seems light years ahead.