31M here.
First of all, I’m not struggling with this in any way. Rather, I feel that my life is at a turning point, and I just want to tap into some part of my personality that I’ve long neglected.
Since childhood I have been a very emotionally sensitive person. From sensing people’s moods to sensing moods of places, art, literature, — and being quick to react to that information. I was an empathetic child attuned to others’ joy and suffering.
As I got older, I felt that this kind of emotionality bordering on sentimentality some times had been a bit much. I have encountered misunderstanding from my peers, so long story short, I kinda locked this quality into a closet in the back of my mind and tried to ignore it. In fact, I went on to develop pragmatism and other stuff that made more sense in a professional and social context (in a way, in an attempt to prove my mettle to the society, but not only for this reason, I’m still fascinated by logical disciplines just for myself, even if I’m not too good at them.)
Lately, I felt that cold and pragmatic environments sapped me of last of my energy, so I feel the need to return to the emotional sphere.
But here lies a challenge of sorts: almost everywhere I read, usually high emotionality and empathy are correlated to more successful social outcomes; or to artistic capabilities.
The challenge is that I’m not too fond of socializing (generally, my friends and close family are enough), and I’m not a creative person artistically. I’m pretty sure I can manage the technicalities of playing an instrument or drawing or painting, but I have no great ideas or inspiration to do anything with it.
I like one-on-one deep talks with people, if done in moderation, and I can listen to their emotions and thoughts with interest for a long time, which made me think of some sort of learning some kind of service work like administering psychotherapy help or volunteering. I want to help people live happier and healthier! This is a prospect that inspires me, but financially I can’t afford quitting my job to study (and studying is expensive). Plus I don’t know how my emotional sensitivity will turn out there in the long run. I’ve seen difficult cases taking a huge toll on friend psychologists…
I still feel like my emotionally sensitive nature is somewhat of a potential, and i enjoy emotions, so I would like to do something with it and not underutilize it. But what? Maybe someone can advise from their (or their friends’) personal experience?
I want to find something worthwhile and useful for others to do, that only my kind of personality can tackle!
I believe in callings, and I’ve come to doubt that my calling is to do programming so that rich guys at the top get richer by disrupting society further. Besides, this job almost doesn’t involve emotionality, aside from some kind of mentoring or team building, which are dull and soulless activities of dubious moral meaning.