OP here, gonna double post a couple of general replies to common themes, here's the first:
For those who mentioned/wondered about my day job / income, I work a "humble" warehouse job at a university bookstore, so I get to work with textbooks and general books regularly (though not all the time). This was how I got exposed to all these subjects! The pay isn't the greatest, but the university has great employment benefits and security.
And an interesting backstory: I actually started working here as a part-time seasonal cashier after dropping out of grad school and had to find something "random" to pay some bills. After a couple of seasons and no luck finding a "real job", my supervisor suggested that I apply for the warehouse opening. I was aversive to the idea, because I never would've imagined working a seemingly "lowly" warehouse job, especially as a "university grad". I applied anyway because I had no luck elsewhere, and I've stayed here ever since!
Honest to god, if I didn't work here, I would've stayed in the sciences with my head in the sand, clueless about other disciplines, clueless about the world.
Gonna quote one of the comments here: "The universe has a strange way of putting the pieces together... It will make sense looking back on it." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30928282
PS I love that you folks are actually thinking about this constructively. I'm blown away, can't thank you all enough!
If working a "lowly" warehouse job and dabbling in many different subject areas is what makes you happy, that's obviously perfectly fine. But if you believe that dabbling in many different areas will actually somehow in the long run lead to any kind of (work-related) success you're dead wrong in my opinion. You have to focus most of your time on one or maybe two or three areas (after you have become really good at one thing) in order to be able to make any meaningful impact somewhere. Knowing a little of a lot of things is nice to have, but unfortunately has very little use in our society.
Not looking for success, if I were I wouldn't still be packing boxes. Just trying to be more constructive and exploring various ways to make that happen.
For those who mentioned/wondered about my day job / income, I work a "humble" warehouse job at a university bookstore, so I get to work with textbooks and general books regularly (though not all the time). This was how I got exposed to all these subjects! The pay isn't the greatest, but the university has great employment benefits and security.
And an interesting backstory: I actually started working here as a part-time seasonal cashier after dropping out of grad school and had to find something "random" to pay some bills. After a couple of seasons and no luck finding a "real job", my supervisor suggested that I apply for the warehouse opening. I was aversive to the idea, because I never would've imagined working a seemingly "lowly" warehouse job, especially as a "university grad". I applied anyway because I had no luck elsewhere, and I've stayed here ever since!
Honest to god, if I didn't work here, I would've stayed in the sciences with my head in the sand, clueless about other disciplines, clueless about the world.
Gonna quote one of the comments here: "The universe has a strange way of putting the pieces together... It will make sense looking back on it." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30928282
PS I love that you folks are actually thinking about this constructively. I'm blown away, can't thank you all enough!