Would have put this in my welcome new member thread but thought it might get a better response here, if a mod thinks it should be moved elsewhere feel free I guess.
Just wanted to say I wish I had joined a forum like this sooner, everyone here seems to embrace their 'condition' or whatever you want to call it, while I've spent years trying to fit in, only in these last few months admitting to people I have it. In school I had minimal to no support specific to Aspergers syndrome, it was more to just get me through the day.
Someone mentioned in another thread that I might have an OCD like empathy worry of other people, putting others before myself (unless it causes me too much grief) to the point I value what I do based on how people around me feel and find it hard to form lasting friendships and relationships, often feeling 2nd class, not wanting to burden people and if my life ethos could be summed up in one maddening and detrimental to my life phrase it would be 'do the right thing' .
Because of this like many of you have done I'm sure, I hid for a long time online which taught me more things about people than years of neurological socialising did. Even though I've never taken a degree, academically I'm a bit of a jack of all trades when it comes to computers, though over time this seems to be fading.
So why is any of this relevant to the jobs section of the website? Well hopefully to paint a picture better of what I'm going through now. I have a creative side, but with my social difficulties and empathy it's made it harder to let my mind just freely do things. I worked for the BBC for a while in an editorial team, where I knew exactly what was expected of me (though I admit looking back it was all so surreal to be working there I felt kind of detached from it all in a way, which might explain why I never got another job there when the original contract was over)
I've spent years hiding when I haven't been in work and now that I have a job in graphic design, you would have thought I would be happy, no such luck. I'm underpaid, technically a rookie and this is all adding to the fact that no-one else is in the graphic design department because I AM the whole department! Anything creative, the thing meant to be most fun about the job has mostly been stressing me out, instead only repetitive tasks seem to have been the only relief, which must be an AS thing.
Now to the point of the point of all this wall of text, being the only one in the department is stressing me out having no-one to talk to with a similar skillset, and it's forcing me to face my problems like how I turn to a near emotionless on the surface 'yes' man under pressure. I feel like I need a new job and a way to bridge this void online/offline duality of my personality, trusting myself and people. I don't know where to start or want to let people down either, all I know is I need help.
14 Jan 2014, 4:01 am
