Dear Kaz:
I like your analysis, a good part of it anyway, and sometimes find myself enjoying your writing itself. If I was you- and I am not- I wouldn’t want to give up my analytical and writing skills. This is very much part of you as it happened and it served you well enough- here you are in the present, making sense, intelligent, introspective, thinking…

You wrotea: “At this point in time, it seems that the most likely way forward would be to start working for other people… I wonder if it’s possible that doing some volunteer work and choosing to give love freely with no expectation of return might allow for some emotional growth and therefore motivational too. I don’t know, it’s possible it might just end up being an emotional drain instead….
I think at this point, my analytical skills aren’t going to be much help. Some action is undoubtedly required and some participation in the wider world. I hope I manage to find out how to do that.”

You bring up a few suggestions: working for other people, volunteer, give love freely with no expectation. You wonder if either one suggestion will work for you or not. You state that your analytical skills are not going to be much help IF you don’t take action. I agree. I suggest you take action as in experiementing, as in taking on the scientific method of experimenting- that will fit well with you being heavily analytical and it will allow the possibility of inreasing your emotional footprint as you termed it.

What if you approach your life now as a series of experimentaions. Working for others, take the steps toward making it happen and pay attention to what you feel about it, one step at a time: gather evidence. Maybe write it down. In each step, how do you feel? What are the surprises? What are you discovering?

Same with volunteering: gather evidence, use the experience to gather evidence, evaluate (is it draining? Is it rejuvinating?) Same thing with giving love without expectations (in the context of volunteering, you meant? or otherwise, doesn’t matter to me here)- how does it feel in every step of the way?

Approach it all in a scientific way, gathering information, objective evaluations (of subjective internal experiences as well, of course), proving or disproving your hypothesis (a hypothesis example: loving with no expectations will increase my emotional footprint.) be open minded, like a scientist, form an experiment, gather results, reach a conclusion and/ or form another experiment.

What do you think?
anita