Dance scene from Bande a part by Godard (1964)

When Z was young, I overheard Nino saying he doesn’t like playing Candy Land. And Z said, “Dad, I’m the kid and you’re the dad, so you have to play games that are boring to you because you’re not the kid.”

When the kids were little, they’d ask Nino why he left us, and he’d always say it was because of me: “Your mom is impossible to get along with.” But now that the kids are grown up, Nino spends almost all his free time with me.

Now Nino and I are at the art museum which I used to go to with the kids and now I only go to with Nino. I’m not sure if this is because the kids are not interested. The gift shop is my favorite part of any museum because it’s a way to spend money to make life better. I tell Nino we should pick out a puzzle to do with Natalie.

“Why?”

”Because she doesn’t like watching movies with us but she will do a puzzle.”

“If she doesn’t want to be with us, just let her. It’s her decision.”

I buy the puzzle. But I know I won’t be able to get Nino to do it tonight. He has his heart set on Godard.

We are watching the 100 most influential films according to 200 directors. Nino wanted the critics’ list — he went to film school with too many of the directors to trust them. I like the directors’ list because they vote for films that influenced their process.

Nino gives in when he sees that a bunch of Godard films made it to the top of both lists. But after three movies I started feeling like Godard’s idea of exploring women was mostly finding stylish ways to brutalize them.

Nino is crushed by my disdain for Godard, so I watch more. Then I need a break and we walk through the Boston Common. My new apartment is three blocks from the Common and one block from Nino. Z says we’re doing a slow-motion return to marriage and in a few years we’ll be living in the same apartment.

The hardest part about being close to Nino is his inability to be close to the kids. I should have pushed harder when the stakes were board games. Then maybe he’d have practice making compromises as an act of love.

On our walk I bring up the latest version of this conflict because all conflict goes so slowly with Nino that I can’t sit still. I tell Nino he has to go to Peru with Z because Z is paying for the trip, and it’s a heritage thing.

Nino says, “Uh huh.”

“Is that a yes? Can you add tone of voice so I can understand?”

He says,“Let’s just keep walking,”

I interrupt his thinking. “This is not a question of is it fair to not go with him. It’s a question of do you want to experience life with your kids.”

I am stupid for pushing because now he’s in question mode. “How will Z plan a trip? How will he pay for it? When will we figure out the date because I have to use vacation time.”

“So you’re worried the trip will be a hard for you? I mean, what about when we took two toddlers across country and we had no money and no place to stay? Are you worried a trip to Peru will be harder than the hardest family trip we ever had?”

He thinks. Then he says, “Emotionally hard. I would have to call my family and figure out how to connect with them.”

We turn back to walk home. I am so pissed. “Let’s just admit that I have done all your emotional connecting for your whole life and the problem is I’m not going to Peru.”

Nino says, “That’s not fair. And it’s not helping.”

Actually, debating him does help me. But only in the short term. So I say, “Let’s go home and finish the movie.”

“But you don’t like the movie.”

“I like that I don’t have to mediate the relationship between you and Godard.”

The post Two or three things I know about Nino appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers Blog.

detail of Lips Open into Certain Gendered Sounds (2016) by Ragnhildur Johanns

List of things my family hates about me:

I lie.
I misconstrue conversations.
I don’t remember what I say.
I exaggerate.
I’m manipulative.

They have all told me this.

I’m reckless with people’s care.
I make everything about me.
I’m irresponsible with money.
I’m irresponsible with affection.
I’m unreliable with plans.
I manipulate my kids.
I’m verbally abusive with my brothers.
I’m emotionally abusive with my brothers.
I ask more from my dad than I give.
I pick fights with my mom.

I carry it in a backpack I’m afraid to put down. If I put it down, everything will spill out and I’ll have nothing to carry. No identity that’s mine—only whatever is left when the accusations are gone. So I keep it on. I wrap myself in the list as protection. If I say all of it first, nothing worse can be said to me.

My brother told me today that I twist his words. That I’m a master manipulator through language. That he can’t say anything to me without it being turned. He’s angry that I say my brothers tried to steal my kids.

What happened is this: I told my family we had no money for food. We were homeless, living in a hotel I couldn’t pay for. My brothers decided, together, that they would not give money while the kids were with me. One brother came to visit and wouldn’t get the kids food. I told him he couldn’t come in. Another came to Boston and said he was representing the family, but he wouldn’t give us money either.

I say they tried to steal my kids because that’s what it felt like. The kids had to choose between staying with me and getting help.

I hate that I put them in that position. But I already hated myself, so it didn’t register as new damage. It just felt consistent. Like proof that the list was accurate. Like of course this is what happens when I’m their mother.

My brother says the kids are older now. They can ask for help if they need it. I think they won’t. Not from my family. They remember not having enough food. They remember who came and didn’t help. They also know what my family thinks of me. If you grow up knowing your mother is the problem, you don’t ask her family for anything. You try to need less.

I wouldn’t want a sibling like me either. If I had a family built on secrets and shame, I would look for somewhere to put it. If one person was willing to carry it, I would let them. Who wouldn’t?

There’s no way to know if any of this is true. My family thinks I’m unreliable. That I use language to make people believe things that aren’t real. Maybe I do.

My brother took a trip to rural Japan with his wife and two toddlers. They didn’t have an international driver’s license. They didn’t have cash. They couldn’t get food.

Strangers drove them to a grocery store. The store owner drove them to a bank. Someone else took them to a café and fed them. Then picked them up after. No one knew them. They just saw two kids who needed food.

My brothers would say that was different. It was temporary. A stable family in a bad situation. And with me, it’s never temporary. I always need help and I ask and ask and ask and it doesn’t end.

Helping me is a trap. I can trap them financially. Verbally. Emotionally. If they care about me, they’re stuck. I’m covered in something that doesn’t let go. Like those sticky boards for rats. Once you step on it, you can’t get free, no matter how much you fight.

The post How to be the problem in your family appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers Blog.

I spent ten days preparing for my court case, telling myself each day that tomorrow I wouldn’t need to prepare anymore. But when I get so focused on something I can’t get enough of it. I bound out of bed in the morning because I’m so excited to think about it and have new ideas to organize. And then I thought: this is why autistic people are so effective at what they do. But also: this is such a dangerous skill to have. Because it’s destroying my life. Where is the rest of my life while I’m doing this

This happened at Harvard. A decade where I obsessed more and more about autism until I had read more papers than anyone in my department. I would write a paper every night. I couldn’t stop working. And what I remembered about that is how ineffective it was. Because this kind of brain is only effective if there are people around to provide guideposts.

So for court prep I tried using AI for guideposts. But every time AI wanted to put one up, I was like, fuck AI, and went back to obsessing. I realized I could make all different types of timelines and every timeline would show a different thing. Then I remembered Gantt charts. I was so happy.

Natalie wanted me to do her nails. She has a rule that I have to switch to her favorite person when I do nails, and she checks with a little test; this time she made her hand really stiff, and I didn’t care. She said, “You’re the wrong person. The person who does my nails cares about a stiff hand.”

I didn’t want to switch because I wanted to take a perfunctory break and go back to the court case. That’s why nobody would want a Nobel Prize winner as a parent— if you can’t stop doing your exciting research to do a manicure, you’re a sucky person.

It reminds me of food, before I took Ozempic. I spent my whole life trying to untangle my eating. There was the urge to throw up, which I now know is related to sex abuse. There was nervous eating, which is ADHD. And then there was the obsession with not getting fat, which I think comes from being competitive, though I’m honestly not sure. I could never separate them – eating was just the too-loud background music to my entire life. And then Ozempic turned it all off. I didn’t realize how much of my energy I used to try to not think about food until the urge was just gone. I want an off switch like that for everything.

With the court case behind me, I was mother material again. So Natalie invited me to her symposium. But before she left she said, “Show me what you’re planning to wear.”

I knew she wanted me to wear pants because the person who wears skirts is not a grown-up. We learned this together when we walked from the soccer field to get our passports and I had to stop at the Gap to buy pants. Natalie asked why I was throwing out the skirt. I told her I hated it. She said, “You wear that skirt all the time.” But in that moment I could not imagine wearing a skirt again.

At the symposium there were about 400 posters, kids standing attentively waiting to talk about their research. My brain was swimming. New ideas coming fast from every direction, no single thing holding me hostage.

Then I got a text. The judge posted my decision. I lost. The housing organization lied in documents and perjured themselves at the hearing, but the court found this did not directly cause damages to the plaintiff. The judge said it’s a civil rights matter. I spent ten days on a case that didn’t belong in small claims court. Such a rookie move.

The case was really about paperwork. The organization was supposed to be doing a housing application for me, but they totally forgot about it and then blamed all the late application on me. The problem is that some days I am completely on top of paperwork and other days I can’t remember that it exists. This was the reason they were helping me but also the reason they could blame me for anything.

I couldn’t do paperwork at Harvard either. I was writing paper after paper but I could never figure out how to get myself paid. I would try for a while, then forget it was something I was doing, then have to start over. So the head of my department filled out my paperwork every week. She said don’t worry, it’s not a big deal. I told her I have autism. That’s what I tell people when things get crazy, so they have some explanation.

But I’m giving autism a bad name. Autistic people can predict what they will pay attention to. Not knowing from one morning to the next what I will care about, or who will show up to care about it — that’s DID.

Right now I can’t imagine wanting to do research at Harvard. But I know I was so excited when I was accepted. The same is true with the court research – I am not interested but I know I was. I get frustrated, but I have to let each of the people in me be themselves. I think I am not seeing myself as clearly as Natalie does. But I tell myself the more I switch when she asks me to the more I can understand who is who.

The post Ozempic is the on/off switch I’ve been looking for appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers Blog.

When I started doing research at Harvard, I noticed that almost every family study used poor families as subjects. I assumed the funding skewed that way, but it didn’t — even race-based grants used poor families.

When I asked my PI why, she explained that high-earning families almost never participate. That’s when I understood something about the research: it’s parents who are the problem in families, not children, and Institutional Review Boards don’t approve research that might destabilize a parent. So obvious parenting patterns are ignored in favor of centering solutions around the children – as if they are the problem.

High-earning parents don’t sign up for studies. They pay for “parent empowerment.” That’s the word practitioners use to sell to parents who are overwhelmed and have decided something is wrong with their kids. Parent empowerment promises “families centered on gratitude,” which parents hear as “my kids will do what I tell them”.

The actual work is structure and routine. Someone has to set expectations, enforce them, and repeat every day. That’s no fun, so rich people hire tutors, nannies and coaches to do it. Then the parents can work (so much more fun than parenting!) or focus on the fun, meaningful interactions (we are so close!) while someone else handles the heavy lifting.

This is one of the biggest differentiators among families but no one talks about it because the people who work with parents need those parents to keep paying them. Slow progress means more income. And schools don’t tell parents the truth because the rich parents get teachers fired. Research on this is clear: schools only raise problems with parents when the teacher is having a classroom management issue. Otherwise it’s not worth dealing with the parents.

I didn’t understand any of this until I tried to outsource it myself.

When my kids were four and six, I hired people to practice violin and cello with them. I had money, parenting was hard, the math seemed obvious. The cello teacher found out and screamed at me: “You are the parent! You learn how to practice! It’s your job!” I would not have understood it without her level of outrage.

What she was actually saying is that the job isn’t music. The job is setting high expectations and then working with the child to meet them: structure and routine.

She could say it because she was a famous cello teacher for little kids. There was always another student if I couldn’t handle it. Most people who work with parents are in the opposite position: no leverage.

My homeroom teacher once refused to let me back into school with bruises unless my parents produced a note from the police. My dad was a top Chicago lawyer — but the teacher found the loophole the police couldn’t ignore. It takes someone with nothing to lose to tell parents the real truth about their situation.

We don’t have reliable ways to change long-term outcomes by working only with children. Every time a parent sends a kid to get help, it’s a missed opportunity to take responsibility for the situation that created the problem. No one will tell you that. The researchers can’t. The schools won’t. The empowerment coaches are paid not to.

So I’m telling you: your kid is not the one who needs to change. You are.

The post Everyone who works with your kid needs you to keep paying them appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers Blog.

I don’t use personality type systems the way they’re taught. Memorizing what each letter means is just the entry point. After that, it’s faster to stop using the system directly and start using pattern recognition instead.

Now I ask everyone three questions. When I told my brother that, he said it’s mathematically impossible—you can’t determine four binary variables from three inputs.

Guess his type.

No, actually—guess.

INTP.

You could type him just from that reaction.

Start with: who would correct me?

Then narrow it: who would correct me and not want to discuss it?

A lot of types would correct me. But the ones who would correct me and not want a conversation are basically ISTJ and INTP. ISTJs usually dismiss personality typing entirely, so they wouldn’t engage. INTPs will engage—but only to point out the flaw, not to explore the system.

That’s the method.

You’re not tracking letters. You’re tracking patterns in how people think, what they notice, and how they respond.

This only works when there’s signal. The point isn’t the question—it’s what the person can’t help revealing. For something random, most types respond the same way. For example, most types would ask why is there a picture of my dog here?

I taught this in a live session last month, and people asked for another one. We’ll meet April 24 at 5pm Eastern. I’ll type people you know and walk you through the process so you can get faster.

Meanwhile, here are new personality type posts:

INTJ repairing a relationship: “I fixed it, why are you still talking?”

ENFPs talk themselves out of what they actually want

ENFJs don’t trust their impact unless they’re there

INFPs can’t reach people from outside the system

ENTJs kill their own companies by doing too much alone

INFJ writing redux

The post Three questions. One type. appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers Blog.

Right now the WNBA has two leagues inside one league. The older cohort of players spent their careers going overseas in the off-season just to survive, building the sport when there was no money in it. The newer cohort arrived when Caitlin Clark did — with audiences already built during college and the economics transformed overnight from NIL.

I watch the older players complaining about lack of recognition and no retirement plan, and it makes me want to look away. Because I get why they’re angry but I don’t want to be them.

I’ve been obsessed with this because I keep seeing the same pattern everywhere, and I’m starting to think the most important career skill isn’t raw talent or work ethic. It’s being able to recognize which cohort you’re in. But I think it’s almost impossible to recognize in time to get out.

When I was figure skating in the seventies, I woke up at five in the morning to practice compulsory figures — tracing figure eights on the ice for hours. That was how you won. Then the sport eliminated figures and started rewarding jumps and spins. I was with a group of kids who spent ten years on something that became irrelevant overnight. I didn’t see it coming.

Then I started writing professionally just as the internet became the dominant publishing platform. I never assumed I had an audience. I always wrote knowing you could count exactly how many people read. That turned out to be a massive advantage — but I didn’t know it was an advantage at the time. It just felt like the only way to do it.

I’ve been in a great cohort and a terrible cohort and I couldn’t see either one while I was inside it.

When my son was at Juilliard I could see the pipeline breaking in real time. The kids being rewarded were the ones with impeccable technique and perfect discipline — the traits that mattered before YouTube. But the musicians building large audiences online were being rewarded for personality and originality.

It looked exactly like practicing figure eights. I could see it clearly because it wasn’t happening to me.

After my son’s head injury ended his music career he pivoted to computer science, arriving at Duke exactly when AI tools were transforming how programming was taught. His first-year class was already using AI to write code. He immediately understood that the advantage wasn’t mastering syntax — it was combining computer science with something else.

I watched that happen and thought: why can I see it for him and not for myself? He was learning to code at the exact moment coding stopped being the point. I kept wondering what that looked like for me.

The first time I saw it clearly in my own life was at Harvard. I’d spent years doing autism research — reading a thousand scholarly articles, building a database of research subjects, learning the field on my own between homeschooling my kids and supporting them financially. I had the research. I had the access. I even published a paper. But I had more papers in me, and I couldn’t get them out because the format was the gate. I wrote drafts the wrong way. I asked the wrong people. I burned through goodwill and contacts just trying to get the format right.

Then AI showed up and made knowing the format unnecessary. I should have been celebrating the disappearance of the gate, but I had used everything up fighting against it.

That’s where the WNBA veterans are. They spent years making the league valuable. They just didn’t imagine the value would show up in someone else’s rookie contract.

I don’t think we’re actually afraid of AI replacing us. We’re afraid we spent everything building something, and the value shows up in someone else’s bottom line. I’m still not sure I’m in the right place now, and I’m always looking for signs. Because you don’t get to choose your cohort, you only get to choose when you leave.

The post The cohort problem: Which one are you in? appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers Blog.

A few months ago, someone emailed asking to interview me about my writing routine. His name was Hao. He runs a publication called Famous Writing Routines. I said sure.

I’m publishing this interview because it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever accidentally said about writing. I don’t know what it felt like for Hao, but he never published it. So here it is:

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I’ve been writing a personal blog for 20 years documenting what I’m doing: raising venture capital for three startups; tracking my son’s cello journey to Juilliard; publishing my autism research at Harvard. The blog documents sad things too. I posted about my husband beating me the night it happened. A blog reader called the police.

What does a typical writing day look like for you?

I have to work really hard each day to keep myself mentally and emotionally stable. I have dissociative identity disorder from extreme trauma when I was a child. My brain split into different people to cope. I can’t communicate by thinking at them. So I write to keep all the parts of me feeling heard.

Only one part can be in charge of the body at a time. Each person in my head has their own place where they signal when they want to take over — a specific pain in a specific location. Or I’ll get a chill I can’t shake til I switch.

What are your must-have writing tools?

I used to write half on a computer, half by hand in bound journals. I found I write differently depending on the tools. I’ve moved more than twenty times, and I carried more than fifty journals wherever I went.

I write a lot on my phone. I tried dictating instead of typing, but we would switch who was dictating midway through a piece without realizing it, which made the writing interesting but very hard to edit.

In my last move I lost half the boxes of journals. It was so upsetting that I stopped writing by hand entirely. Now I only write electronically. When I wrote by hand I could tell who was writing by the handwriting. When I type, I can’t tell.

What do you do when you hit a roadblock?

I think I just hit a roadblock. I switched in that last answer. I would never write that but I’m leaving it. The roadblock isn’t writing. It’s writing over the person who wrote that.

We’re not supposed to know what the others know, but the writing keeps everything so no one disappears.

Previous posts about DID

The first post I wrote about DID

My kid writing about having a mom with DID

Me wearing a down coat in the summer before I knew the chills were from DID

The post Why no one interviews me anymore appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers Blog.

Almost everyone is mistyped where it matters most. Not in a fun, abstract way — in the exact place that’s holding them back.

When you’re mistyped, you build a life around the wrong assumptions. You try to fix the wrong problems. You expect the wrong things from the people you love. It’s subtle, which is why even people who have studied type for years get it wrong. I wrote about personality type for a decade and still mistyped people I was closest to.

So I’m having live personality type office hours for paid subscribers.

You can come with a question about yourself, or someone you’re trying to understand. Or you can just watch, which is probably where people learn the most anyway.

What we’ll do is type in real time. You’ll see how I’m listening, what I’m ignoring, where people contradict themselves without realizing it.

Typing is about patterns, and I spent my life making lists and charts looking for patterns, and I bet you have, too. I’ll show you how to look for the pattern someone lives in, the pattern they think they live in, and the gap between the two. That gap is where change comes.

Finding the true type means seeing where you’re performing instead of being yourself. It shows where you’re expecting something from someone that they will never give you, and where you’re underestimating what actually comes naturally. I have never had someone leave this process and wish they didn’t know.

Half the value is getting typed. The other half is watching other people get typed — that’s how you actually learn to do it yourself. Once you can do it, your relationships get calmer and your decisions get faster.

If you’ve been reading my personality posts and thinking, okay, but how do I actually know — this is it.

This session is Thursday, March 19 at 5pm ET. It’s for paid subscribers to my Substack. You can join here.

I look forward to seeing you!

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