I am feeling more handicapped ..............

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.....as the years roll by. These last few months I've had a complex and flawless project to make and complete for a customer 5k miles away. Today its completed and is being fitted into its equally impressive custom crate that I made seven years ago. Point is, I am finding complex high finish/flawless work to be more difficult, I am working so slowly for fear of mistakes and to be quite honest detest the work. Three major components and maybe a weeks effort (tho only four/five hour days) were scrapped. This work is regarded as the cleverest. I am fine on normal run of the mill engineering type work or repetetive machine work, its the arty design orientated one-offs that are harder. Nine years without my first real big customer of thirteen years (first love?) doesn't help, also a 400 hour (four hundred hours) over-run for a one time prestigious customer in 2002 didn't help either.

The hours have massively over-run on this project and I have been honest with the customer that my old speed and skill seems to be leaving me. I am still the equal of anyone in my trade, its the 'exceptional' stuff that I grind to a near dead stop on. I have still achieved an outstanding result yet it was a hard climb to get there. That is a good analogy.

I find I cannot visualise 'what is the next step' and /or maintain more than four/five hours in any day on this difficult work. I think for many years I worked in a state of near mania and four years of acupuncture (traditional chinese) has taken the edge off me. I also garden two days a week which is altering my perception of where my energies must go/or are going. I hope its not burn-out as I wish to maintain the work routine I have for at least another 20 years. I think the mania has gone, and there are obvious problems in 'being applied'. I can also see now that difficult work is difficult for me. Help please.

Which engineering field?

Precision also with an art and design element.

I've always experienced that feeling of what do I do next to move a project along. I would freeze up, and panic. That's a reason I liked assembling model cars as a lad, I simply followed the instructions step by step.

As a kid i was very keen in Meccano the construction kit, gears, gearboxes, cranes whatever as well as elementary radio / electronics, wood and metalwork. So I had an early start. As a grown up I have very good minds eye visualisation and am highly skilled and innovative.

Both now and six years ago I have had hellish problems trying to put sufficient hours quickly enough into these big one-off type projects. Its as if I become overwhelmed. Perhaps there is a limit to my ability or mental stamina. Perhaps working alone for 25 years in not healthy.

My mind doesn't work as quickly and accurately as it used to, either. I think for me part of it is stress/fatigue from poverty, and I'm hoping I can get some of it back if I can get out of poverty, but I expect a lot of it is aging. Not just physical aging, but life experience, which slows things down and complicates them. Ideas and focus are so much purer when you're young.

If you want to keep doing this work, you're simply going to have to slow down to do it. Otherwise, shift the focus of your work to something that flows better.

The last few minutes have been a Eureka! moment.

Fifteen minutes ago (11.10 pm) I just finished re-crating the finished project as I had forgotten to tighten three screws.

It looks utterly stunning and a major point of design that for seven years hadn't looked quite right now flows perfectly.

It occurred to me, running up and down stairs often brings flashes of inspiration, that what i haven't had for so long is enthusiasm and BUZZ from my work. Tonight I have it.

Considering the trials and tribulations I've endured, a 2k hours poject late nineties - got nowhere, several more on top of that , then losing the main customer of thirteen years in year 2000 - no wonder I'm flagging. Typical aspi - no social network - not one of the boys!

I too - Anemone - have suffered low income for ten /fifteen years while continuing to pay the mortgage on a property we shouldn't really be able to afford. I wonder if I'm on the up?