Many people have unique valuable abilities that they do not know what to do with. This question is not about my specific situation. I am asking a general question and providing my situation as an example to help make the general question easier to understand.
In my case, I have the ability to work with meaning in source code. I have never met or heard of someone else able to do this. That is why I am so alone. This ability has the potential to provide benefits to thousands of companies, teams, customers, products, services etc. I have developed techniques for doing this work over the last 25 years including over 10,000 hours working with these techniques, and yet when I use this skill on the job, talk about this, show my work, promote my approach, look for collaborators, etc. all I get is blank stares and all I hear is crickets. I think my approach would be the right tool for the job about 15% of the time.
I have no experience doing anything but being an employee. I am a complete novice at other kinds of work, but would be willing to look into something else that makes a lot of sense. What do you recommend?
Many people have unique valuable skills that are not being used. I want answers that address this problem in preference to answers that address my own particular situation. I want this question to benefit others.
Specifics:
I provide these specifics as an example so that people can understand the question better. I am interested in an answer to the general problem that many people have.
I have developed a data type that can store a permutation of concepts. I call this an endeme. This data type can be used as rich metadata for any entity. The permutation aspect of this data type allows a programmer to identify how important each concept is for that entity. The concept aspect of this data type allows a programmer to program the app's interaction. As an example, given the top 20 pizza toppings, which are your three favorite ones in order of how much you like them? Your answer to that question is a simple endeme. Endeme sets are the sets of concepts from which endemes are constructed. In this case the set would be the list of pizza toppings.
Multiple endemes can be used to characterize pieces of data, thus turning them into information by describing what they mean within the context of the application or situation. I see information as being data that has meaning.
Thank You all for Your Input
Some of it has been hard to hear and some of it has been useful. Given your input, I think there is something intuitive that I don't quite know how to express yet, and that may be useful to present at some point when it finally surfaces. And I will work to present examples. The importance of that has been reiterated. None the less, I do want answers that will benefit other people who have this problem also.