I'm back, but I still haven't found what I am looking for.

I've had a funny half year, after losing a pet and then some big changes for my family, somehow I really lost my way and track of time. The last few weeks have been focused on making some organisational changes in my home; moving furniture, repurposing storage, failed DIY and generally trying new arrangements. As well as repeatedly thumping my computer which is being REALLY slow.

Unlocking brain power

Now I am watching a film called Limitless in which a man takes a new drug that brings him absolute clarity, his deductive reasoning increases more than tenfold. I've yet to see the part where he finds the drawbacks but he is able to connect ideas, memories and patterns from his life to create new solutions, and a lot of money, and it is making me think.

I know I am smart, I was always smart, but I've been a bit unlucky having worked for companies that either went broke or had some other issues, so I have never really had a chance to prove myself. I've also been somewhat let down by my health which is a nuisance and doesn't really help.

I am very aware of things around me, like the guy in the film. I'm good at putting ideas together and creating new ideas from them but I am not so good at how to connect to the right people to put them into practice. I've been burned a few times; shared an idea, heard nothing back then one day the idea is on the shelves. Twenty years ago at university I wrote an essay predicting that the music business would come to see the live experience as its primary income stream, and now with the rise of filesharing my theory is proving quite accurate. There are even businesses based on people sharing the experience.

I know that in the right situations I am quick thinking, able to spot trends, aware of potential pitfalls and capable of asking all the questions that get the information needed at that moment. A little bit like the man in the film who's brain starts working at full capacity.

But somehow I can't get that on a CV and prove to a decent employer that I am the person they need.

I know that 'the right situations' are ones where I am stimulated, required to stretch my mind, a little under pressure and where I have some incentive to solve the issues at hand. I.e. situations that are not a lot like most of the paid employment I have had.

It is partly bad luck that I found jobs in the wrong places, partly a distinct lack of self belief and the confidence required to get my foot through the right door (I am most definitely an introvert), and partly a serious distaste for the mundane and repetitive. Not that I can't knuckle down, I've cleared rooms piled high with junk and turned them into orderly and accurately mapped file storage spaces, but when you keep being asked to do those tasks but have the brain power for so much more it gets to be entirely disheartening.

I've always had the sense that the solution for me is just a tiny bit beyond my reach, that if I could turn a little quicker that idea I glimpsed would come into full focus or that if I could just connect couple of dots I would have all the answers.

So the little pills the man in the film takes to make all that happen sound very appealing. Except now the film is over, I really don't want to deal with some of those consequences.