For the past several days I have been chasing a work opportunity. I am not sure that it will come to fruition but it has been interesting to make the attempt.

In conducting an examination of my marketable skills, I have come to the conclusion that I am unlikely to perform well in my prior role as a technical support engineer. The key drawback is my inability to quickly master new information. If IT has a core skill, that core skill is the ability to learn, to engage in constant upgrading, the continual need to gain knowledge of new techniques and technologies, to turn on a dime in respond to customer needs and demands. I understand these parameters in a conceptual sense. I am less certain of my ability to make a positive response in a real world setting. My attempts at learning have not proved fruitful.

The one thing that I do appear to be good at is writing. I do not fully understand the reason for this. My 12 years in IT did not require great skill in writing. The majority of all interaction was oral, direct to the customer, to peers, to management. There was a need to log technical notes, and maintain a record of all customer interaction, but this was a mundane form of documentation and did not truly reflect the creative gestalt of expressing complex thought in words.

I have no idea where that last phrase  –  the creative gestalt of expressing complex thought in words  –  came from. This is part of the mystery. The incomprehensibility of my life at the moment.

When I try and isolate why I appear able to write, I am forced to acknowledge the contribution made by this blog. The blog project has imposed a constant demand. There have been numerous days on which creating a post has been an inordinate struggle. Each sentence began a new battle. And, as is true of any battlefield, at the end of the day the sight was not pretty. I returned again and again to the same content, constantly reshaping and honing it.

But there were also those rare days on which the text seemed to flow unbidden across the page. I have no explanation for this, no understanding of the responsible mechanism.

Dr H has spoken of my actions acting to reprogram my neural circuits. It is very strange to contemplate that fact. I have difficulty programming in ordinary js and html. But I have no problem at all with reprogramming my own mind.