todayilearned

I'm not any better off. "Loves rabbit hole tangents" isn't appealing either, but spineless gimp is far worse. It doesn't help that I've run my own business and would refuse to hire me.

Maybe explore sales of different types. Trivia is a good icebreaker. When I was in my teens I worked at Macy's and did really well, then was recruited to Nordstrom's. Women's shoes, in SoCal has several six figure earners, so I gave it a try. I was AWFUL at sales there. Turns out, I do really well with understanding the products available and presenting all of your options clearly. I suck at making a person feel good about their decisions or understanding their emotional state/expectations. Later in life I owned my own auto body shop, working mostly for used car lots and doing airbrush graphics on the side. I absolutely hated selling myself to new dealers because it has that same Nordstrom like emotional reinforcement kind of dynamic. After losing a bunch of weight and taking a career vacation as the Buyer for a chain of bike shops, I only dealt with certain high end customers directly out of the shops. Once again, I was hyper aware of all products available on the market that I had access to from distributors. I could overwhelm anyone on the subject, but if you knew EXACTLY what you want, I was one of the few people that could tell you all of your options in detail.

Just trying to say, those people skills, like being able to to trivia smalltalk are valuable in some niches. I can't do that at all any more. I just try to keep my mouth shut if I'm around anyone any more because everything on my mind is likely boring AF to 99% of people I encounter, if they understand me at all. I wouldn't call myself smart, just a poor communicator really.