Finding something you enjoy

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I'm unsure if this should go in the "Work and finding a Job" section, if it does then please move it. Or let me know and I'll remake it.

I have a difficult time discerning between what I find enjoyable and what I find tolerable.
It's almost impossible for me to name something I genuinely enjoy, especially off the top of my head, with so many options it's difficult to differentiate between things that are enjoyable and things that are tolerable. Particularly in the areas of employment, there are a great many things I would tolerate doing in a work environment, but I can't think of even a single thing that I would enjoy doing.

This has made finding a suitable job very difficult, as I generally don't realise if I dislike certain aspects of my job until I'm in the midst of a meltdown (first time I've actually used that term) at which point it's too late.

Does anyone else find it difficult to find something they truly enjoy?

Always. I "love" to sleep and read. Not much career opportunity in that.

I had no trouble finding something that I enjoy.

I think Lecks specifically means something he could make a career of. They say find what you love and make a career from that. I enjoy a lot of things but none of them have any practical career applications.

Not necessarily, but it's what caused me to think on it more deeply and made me realise that I don't particularly enjoy anything and this being a place to share thoughts and possibly find like-minded people to help alleviate any duress, I thought I'd make a thread about it.

Though I do want to point out that this thread isn't for the purpose of sharing what you enjoy, or that you enjoy "many things". Rather, it's for people like myself who find it difficult to discern what constitutes as enjoyable.

if the subject is finding work or employment one enjoys, that is so far out of my comprehension and experience that i cannot intelligently respond. having a truly FUN and enjoyable job is right up there with winning million$ in the lotto - IOW just not in my cards, to extend the gambling metaphor. i was fortunate to have [for about a year before i got laid-off] a relatively nice job in which i was secretary for a hospital labor and delivery ward and the unit coder as well. it was not stressful, it was at night when all the brassholes were gone for the day, and with fellow nightowls to work-with, almost enjoyable. i sat in an orthopaedic chair in front of a PC and entered data, printed-out schedules and charts and translated medical data into code categories for billing purposes. it was calm and peaceful, as all the hubbub was during the day shift. i could have stayed there doing this for decades, but alas, it was not to last, as a RIF culled lots of folk from the civil service rolls, including moi. but now i am REALLY enjoying myself as an unemployed bum in vaguely genteel poverty.
so i guess that, to help one decide what is enjoyable or not, one first has to define the word by its synonyms-

pleasant, fun-filled, delightful, gratifying, rewarding- you get the idea. a pertinent quote from george orwell:

"If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, then why should he be happy in a labor-saving utopia?"

but know also that "fun" is highly subjective. however, if something is fun it generally will put a on your face without you even thinking about it. many folk find themselves in a position where they had to lower their expectations as to what they find enjoyable, and fun is usually the first thing out the window, when it comes to an enjoyable job. this was my case. but i could settle for pleasant, and gratifying/rewarding would come as bonuses occasionally. fun for me is NOT having to deal with the rat race. it is the culmination of a long dream, and it makes me smile when i think about it.

I suspect it's true of most people, that they don't heartily enjoy more than a fairly small fraction of their lives. So maybe tolerable or mildly pleasant activities are the best we can hope for.

I find it very difficult to predict what kind of activities will turn out to be enjoyable for me. Even my special interest (music) is often pure slog and fraught with frustration and poor confidence....if I play music alone, it gets lonely and starts to go round in ever-decreasing circles, and if I play music with others, then they tend to want to modify it in ways I wish they wouldn't. It's more fulfilling than enjoyable. It's very yin-yang - without the bad then the good becomes meaningless. I feel best when I'm pleasantly surprised at how successfully I'm doing a particular task, or when an avenue of endeavour is developing. I seem to need the right level of challenge....too easy and I soon get bored, too hard and it's painful. I often enjoy doing the same task over and over, in a way, but only when I'm actively involved in making it more efficient, elegant, comfortable, or making the result better than it was last time.

Of course it's likely to help if an Aspie happens to find a special interest that can be turned into a career, but there are other factors which I think are at least as important. I can easily feel bad if I'm pressurised into doing something that my gut reaction tells me I'd rather not do, but I often mellow when I've had time to get used to the idea and if I get the chance to "make it my own," i.e. to gain control over the details of how I do it. I usually feel at my worst when I'm learning stuff that eventually turns out to really empower me.

I think that the human psyche is a lot more complicated than this "enjoyment" paradigm can cater for. I tend to go around with the idea that nothing I've experienced is the real, high-octane stuff that I was born to aspire to, but if I were to look for the bliss I really crave, I somehow doubt that I would find it. Maybe most of us would be better off putting more effort into learning to enjoy what we already have, and if we must pursue happiness, maybe we need to look inside ourselves for some of the keys, rather than always trying to shape the outer world into what we imagine will make us happy.

George also mentioned that the word "want" seems to have more than one meaning - we want to avoid all labour, and can hardly wait for machines to do it all for us, but we also want to be active. It's as if a given thing will please one part of the mind but annoy another part of it.

And who was it who said "now that I realise there's no hope, I feel much better" ?

for many many years i felt the same as you, i thought that i have no interest in anything in particular, nor am i good at anything. however, recently i finally realised that what i enjoy doing isn't really a "hobby" per se (not like starwars or some kind of activity/sport or collecting things etc). rather, i enjoy detailed researching. i can spend days researching into something that i do not really know much or intend to learn. it can be a practical item say wellington boots that i need to buy and i will spend days or even weeks researching into them before going off to buy a pair. or it can just be something that i came across by chance. most of these things that i research into don't mean anything to me but i enjoy the process.

after finding this out, i gave up my job as a management consultant and now am doing a phd. this is my 3rd year and still enjoying it a great it. not so much the subject but the daily research that's involved.

Some underrated ideas here:

Sleeping - this is something that is a subject of research and you could
hypothetically get a temp job as the subject of that research, especially
if they are looking for diversity (how is sleep different with autism).

Reading - If you spell and are critical of grammar, be a proof reader or
librarian.

Research -

Making machines that reduce labor or produce fun -

Writing or testing videogames -

Special interests - look for ways to more or less earn with them

Animals (working with them) -

Gardening -
Parks -

Music - it may be inspiring to listen to some music while making your own

Art - I cannot even estimate how much or little my artwork is worth

Making toys -

If unemployment is for some reason a national policy for economic adjustment - must adapt to make use of free time

Recycling junk -

etc???

Miscellaneous things to do:Walk, exercise, bike, hike, swim,
draw, write, make books by hand (google how to), photography,
animate, comics (is this aka graphic novels?),

Try http://instructables.com for
Thousands of ideas for really cool things you can make,
which are cooler than stuff you made in art class or they sell in stores.

Employment wise I would work in a field that I was good at rather than what I enjoy. I tried for many years to pursue a career in photography and ended up doing something that while a part of it, was something that I could just do - which is post production of photos. So I'm actually not doing the part I enjoy but the boring part that I know how to do because it's something that I did in the final stages of sharing my photos with the world.

Everyone hates their job. May as well hate it but be good at it.

I love (more than enjoy, really) pattern-matching, problem solving, playing / analysing music, making things, writing. The two employments I have most enjoyed are statistician and furniture design.

I feel guilty now because I enjoy my life almost 100% of the time at the moment. Don't worry it won't last. I don't have a job right now.

I did do what I loved as a job for a while, and it made me hate it. I did sound engineering for a small studio, and it was the most stressful thing ever. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to get a career that is also your hobby, just my personal experience.

My advice to you Lecks, is to simply try a bunch of stuff out, and see what you like or can at least put up with. Try volunteering and the like. Get experimental.

Lecks,

Have you tried one of those career tests? They have their limits but maybe you would find a general theme on the types of things it suggested. There are several free ones on the internet. Maybe you like or tolerate a job but a meltdown is due to the environment and not necessarily because you hate what you're doing. For me it's sometimes hard to know if I'm going to like something without trying it. I have tried quite a few things that look good on paper but ended up not being for me.

I like to play Pokemon.
I like to catch, breed, train Pokemon.
Then I battle at the Battle Tower and then I use the items I buy for more Pokemon.
I also enjoy physics and learning about outer space (anything beyond the exosphere or magnetosphere).

Like others on this thread, I have taken what I love and turned it into a job with less than optimal results.

I was able to handle commercial photography pretty well, but didn't do well at maintaining the confidence to keep selling myself. Because of the need to deal with people on a frequent basis, I ended up burning out and losing faith in myself a lot sooner than art directors did.

I tried writing for a while, but found it far too emotionally exhausting to handle as a job.

Where I have done okay is in computer graphics. I tend to learn software quickly and easily and I like to play with what can be done in visual effects and graphics. If I had to be an expert in one specific program I would go crazy. Luckily I work for a very small film production company and they need a person who can be a jack of all trades to handle whatever graphics thing that is needed. This week I have been building our website. Last week I was cataloging and processing photographs from a recent video/stills shoot. Before that I was handling post processing and delivery of a video. I also do titles, effects etc on a regular basis. My job changes from week to week and while I find the frequent changes stressful, there is enough variety that I don't get completely bored with any one task.

I guess what seems to work for me is this jack of all trades thing. There is no single thing that is so appealing that I want to do only that. But there are a lot of things in a general field - graphics in my case - that I enjoy doing enough to keep working at. Sometimes I have a project that requires me to work in an area more than I would like. Currently I have had to learn to program in Flash which I have resisted for a long time. But in the end I learn a lot and I have been able to take breaks as I have had to work on other projects in between the Flash work.

I think this kind of job is only possible at a very small company. I am valuable to my boss because he doesn't need to hire 7 or 8 people, each of whom are experts in one particular piece of software. Instead he gets a guy who may not be the greatest at any one piece of software, but can do well enough in 7 or 8 programs and is willing to learn something new if needs be. If my boss needs something particularly sophisticated, he can always bring in a freelancer for that single project.

It might be helpful for you to think of a general field that you enjoy working in and, when looking for work, focus on companies that can use a person who can integrate a broad range of knowledge and skills rather than focusing on being an expert on one narrow area.