pattern recognition

How weird is it for me to be at this job over 4 years now and still love it? I surpassed my old employment longevity record last month and love my job more now than anytime prior. This is a totally alien sensation to me. My default hate pattern is like a steep statistical, up-turned curve. Every single job I've had up to now I've either loved or tolerated at first and then soon came to despise. Is this the job for me or am I doomed (or perhaps blessed?), like my father, to forever be looking past present employment to the next unknown position? My mom has had the same job (working for a mostly evil corporation) for more than 25 years. Perhaps when I was able to realize and express my own true gender, I also inherited/earned the ability from my mom to stay put?

And it's even more strange that I've managed this state of higher-happiness at present because I'm under a good amount of stress at work - I'm juggling lots of projects and all but managing (sans the most important elements, name and pay scale) a staff of 3 librarians.

On another note, I've become addicted to a video game. I haven't played a video this much, besides online scrabble, since my Junior year in college when all the males on our floor logged enough innings of Atari's RBI Baseball to qualify for the Hall of Fame. The even sadder part is that I'm not addicted to some souped-up virtual realty game played out of a Cube or something, but instead am addicted to a very simple computer game, Bejeweled 2 Deluxe.

This game is really just pattern recognition, except with a time limit so that efficiency of action is essential. To be honest I don't even know all the rules (there don't seem to be any instructions beyond the goal of moving jewels around on a board so you get 3, or ideally, more, of the same jewel in a row so as to remove them from the board and allow more jewels to fill their places and themselves be matched up with companions of a similar hue - it's really just a more instinctual version of Mahjong). I've always had a knack for being able to discern/decode certain odd patterns around me and devise shortcuts to traverse or bypass those patterns, and so I've become quite proficient at this silly little game in a hurry.

So I wonder why it is that, even though I seem to so easily grasp the hidden patterns of the jewels, of the TV mystery plot, of the scrambled words, of the interactions of my mind and body, and of the causes and effects of usability and organization and information, I'm so fucking clueless when it comes to so many things that most people don't even have to think about. Things like making small-talk with acquaintances and colleagues without being completely uncomfortable and at a loss for what to say, being able to understand what my soul-mate is thinking most of the time, or just being able to relax and abide a little silence sometimes...