Anyway, in the last post I mentioned how it pays to think about what we can put up with on the job, rather than totally concentrating on finding work that will be meaningful to us. The idea there is that virtually all paid work (anything that isn't truly nearly 100% aligned with one's personal passions) will eventually become a bit of a grind to us - so it's important to be able to "put up" with the particular kind of grind, rather than solely concentrating on finding positives in a potential occupation.
This is nothing radical I suppose. It's just one of the aspects of looking at strengths and weaknesses (and "putting up with an aspect that's generally seen as a negative" is essentially a strength), but I think this often gets glossed over in favour of looking for fulfilment from a job. It seems more positive to think "what will I enjoy?" rather than "what won't drive me nuts?", but I think a balance of the two questions is a good approach.
Meaningless Jobs
My own journey with "meaningless jobs" has been reasonably varied. I've been everything from a paper boy, pizza delivery boy, cleaner (janitor), warehouse hand, kitchen assistant and door-to-door charity collector. All of these jobs had their moments, but of course none were real careers or particularly exciting. However, they did offer a big variety of experiences which - in hindsight - really tested the above theory: the types of boredoms and frustrations in them were radically different.eg. As a pretty extreme introvert, I have to say that the frustration of dealing with "negative human contact" is particularly draining to me. This is why I couldn't handle face-to-face charity collection, or anything which involved a "hard sell" or dealing with difficult customers. Pizza delivery was actually okay in that regard, because the human contact there is almost always totally positive - you're not trying to sell people something - you're brining them something they're eagerly anticipating.
But to get right to the point - my introversion also means that one of my key strengths in putting up with "meaningless jobs" is simply tolerance for boredom and loneliness. Tasks which many people find extremely lonely and mind-numbing (such as standing in front of an industrial dishwasher and loading dishes into it all evening) are fine for me. I can essentially switch off, go into a kind of meditative stance, and just kill time and go through the motions. It's certainly not always "fun", or something I'd want to do forever, but it's far less taxing than jobs which require constantly being switched on to unpredictable human contact, or needing to sustain focus on something which I'm not really entirely "into".
Conclusion
The conclusion I've come to is that a good approach for me would be to look for work where the main challenge - as far as most people's perception is concerned anyway - is simply tolerance for boredom and loneliness. Finding basic "meaning" is relatively easy. All work is "meaningful", by definition. People wouldn't want it done and wouldn't pay you for it if it didn't mean something to them. But of course this is quite abstract, and can't sustain my motivation if I'm pushing against the grain of my personality (and strengths and weaknesses) with a job long term.
I actually enjoy practical work - as in directly seeing physical objects being created, modified, or moved around. It somehow feels more tangible and meaningful to me than sitting in an office pushing buttons (even though I rationally know that knowledge work is just as "real"). But looking at it from the other side - I find it much easier to put up with the grind of relatively repetitive and lesser skilled practical work than professional knowledge work.
I have some clearer ideas now regarding what I'll go for in 2013 anyway. I'll leave the specifics out for now, but I'll write more when I actually sign up for it.
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