Annoying Aunt: You could get a job at the five and dime. What exactly is it that you "do" ?
Tubes with Brain Attached: I'm a computational phenomenologist. I'm currently obsessed with the symbiotic relationship between the algebraic structures of "modern mathematics" and modern generic algorithm-oriented programming structures, such as those implemented in the STL of "modern" C++.
Predatory Energy: That interest has to be commodifiable (sp?). You have been granted opportunity to develop particular knowledge and skills, so you must consider yourself a total quack, or you are simply socially inept, unkempt, rough around the edges, damaged goods.
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The Predatory Energy, at least in these eastern parts of the USA, seems to be galvanized to radiate a psychological assault against the human organism, consisting of an onslaught of various diverse environments stressing our semantic reactions to the point where we snap, then we are judged incompetent, emotionally disturbed, etc.
We are discredited.
Fortunately for the few of us, they don't have room to focus on all of us. We harmless lunatics are left alone, for the most part, unless we exhibit alarming behavior.
So, what is one to do after being relegated to the First-World Equivalent of Untouchables? The mentally ill class, which is growing as more and more clients are mined by the industrial-psychiatric military complex.
In the spirit of a dark and bitter satire, since I most likely won't live long enough to ever work through all those big fat intimidating physics text books, until I do, I can honestly say that, from where I'm standing, what I do is "Computational Phenomenology" as long as this body is sustained by the gargantuan artifice of industrialized agricultural-based civilization.
In other words, it all appears to be quite fragile.