Q: I’m having a tough time looking for a job because I can’t settle on that one thing I want to do. I’ve been in this situation before: I interview great, get a job doing something I start out enjoying, then tire of, then can’t bear to do any more. I’m afraid that whatever direction I take the same thing is going to happen. I last about 6 months in a job then make sure I get fired. So what should I do? I need to resolve this. I’m spinning and don’t know where to land. Help!

A: If I understand your dilemma, it’s something like this: You get excited about beginnings and think that this wonderful feeling is going to last. And it does, until you get past that early euphoria and move into the messy middle of translating ideas into action. That’s when the slog begins, the push-backs start, and the people who might have been as excited as you early on begin to see flaws in the process and instead of moving forward want to hang back and fix what you don’t think is broken. If that’s pretty close to what your experience is, please consider the following:

Instead of taking jobs that are repetitive, require consensus, and have long timelines, take on short-term projects with near-term deadlines that enable you to do what you do best: create strategies to solve real-time problems or come up with ways to streamline the solutions already in place.