Despair Towards Future Career

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I told myself I needed health benefits and money to live on and that’s how I got myself through work when I had it. It was good in the beginning (the first 2-3 years anyway). Then it was okay. Then it got pretty bad but I stuck with it for another six years which was six years too many.

What was crushing was when I finally burnt out pretty spectacularly and ended up on disability.

Problem was, it wasn’t putting in 40 hours of work to be able to enjoy my weekends or free time. It was burning myself over 40 hours of paid work, 30 hours of unpaid lunch where I had little choice to leave the workplace during that time, 1.5 hours of commuting each day if I was lucky, and all the random outside the workplace work stuff I still had to attend to because other people had flextime and had no respect for my time. (I took a trip to another continent for three weeks and still had to check my email.) And it was a needlessly fancy office job where getting fancy took effort too because East Coast downtown office. Towards the end practically all of my free time was spent “recovering” and my brain got so bad it refused to allow me to do basic things like read at times. I’d get home and just crawl into a ball on my living room floor and just lay there for a good half hour.

I think I could have managed just fine as a part-time employee rather than a FTE but I wouldn’t have gotten benefits. But then working full-time was like a double-edged sword where even though I needed and contacted supports I was often denied them due to cost and/or time (hard to find a therapist outside of office hours who will take the crappy employer insurance), or the perception that I was too functional (a lot of “you’re smart; you’ll figure it out”)..until I had a breakdown.

I think all the “passion” stuff about work is kind of misdirected. Sometimes your passion gets turned into massive frustration as you have to do things you don’t be agree with to meet client demands. Maybe it’s really best to have a passion for doing a job well and correctly. If you find yourself in a place that doesn’t seem to value that, find a place that does. I think my real error was not recognizing the bad situation I was in and getting out of it. (Some of our clients were literal dictators, including the leader of Syria.)

Don’t knock the work until you’re in it and doing it for a while. Learn to advocate for yourself. Be mindful of the effects work and all it entails has on you. And maybe have someone in your life who can help you with balancing these things.

I didn’t have help because people never believed me until my condition spiraled to the point where people couldn’t deny it because I got so good at masking it all.

I’m not trying to scare you but I’m also not gonna say that it’s going to be easy.

Fnord

Some homeless people have jobs. Minimum wage full time does not pay room and board in many places

Jimmy

Work 8 hours a day, sleep 8 hours. Commute, eat, bowel movement, house chores. Barely enough time for anything else

being somebody not blessed with entrepreneurial gene set, as it CANNOT effectively be taught to those lacking the basic aptitude,* contrary to what the horatio alger types believe. I was stuck in a job I was totally not suited for, in a toxic workplace that could charitably be termed "scorpions in a bottle." it was not unknown for people to keel over way ahead of time, lotta workman's comp claims. now and then one poor sap was discovered dead in their car in the parking lot. it destroyed my own health ahead of time. I may well have been one of the premature casualties also, but not for a gift from the gods that came my way just in time. so some advice from this old geezer would be, if you are still young and healthy, to sacrifice your youthful health and energy when you still have it to sacrifice, burning the candle at both ends, working full time plus a part-time job to pay for living expenses, to pay your way through school in a degree program with an actual perennial demand in the working world, get it done and over-with, take advantage of whatever networking programs/apprenticeships are available, get it done when you are young, otherwise you will turn out like me with destroyed health and bad memories. take whatever job that pays sufficiently and is tolerable and not hazardous to one's health. save every penny you can and learn basic investing, also get into a HOUSE of your own ASAP [even if it is a tin can out in the middle of nowhere], rent is just going up, never goes down. learn to live as simply and cheaply as people of your grandparents' generation [depression era]. learn that bling for now comes at a cost in your future, having to work too long to pay for it all.

*in just the same manner that music can't be taught to people who are tone-deaf

can't count the number of back-to-back OT [24 hours on the job] I've had to do. based on how wiped out I was afterwards, I wonder if the OT was worth it.

I actually feel pretty guilty that I've never worked a real job in my life. I've been getting disability checks since my mom first applied me for it once I was old enough. A lot of people aren't that lucky.

All the jobs I qualify for are minimum wage and all the other ghetto riffraff also qualify

Those jobs are not jobs that I would be good at or want. Most people do not want those jobs.

Dread work

Restaurant retail sales

Angry customer
Uncomfortable uniform
Crowded hot kitchen
Dirty
Dangerous
Control freak rules
No sitting down
Heavy boxes lifted
Working outside
"Dog friendly workplace"
"Physically aggressive children"

I didn't qualify until the very end, for a nice clean safe comfortable job in line with my aptitudes.

I am:

Physically weak
Academically stupid
Vocationally incompetent
Afraid of dogs
Socially awkward
Emotionally fragile
Lethargic
Hearing sensitive
Bad at driving
Uptight
Obsessive compulsive disorder


Any job I qualify for, almost nobody wants

^^ you ain't alone in this. I am [generally]-

*physically weak and clumsy
*academically insufficient
*vocationally insufficient
*afraid of dogs and DEATHLY afraid of bees
*socially awkward
*emotional to excess [Stendahl's Syndrome]
*lethargic
*hearing and sight-sensitive [to harsh sharp sounds and lights]
*mediocre at driving
*never managed being both relaxed yet alert
*don't know if it's OCD but too many times I've returned home to make sure the toilet stopped flushing
there was only one job I qualified for AND didn't hate, that I managed to get [hospital coding].

Aunt blabby, the jobs that my limitations allow me to work at, are jobs that are minimum wage, that almost nobody wants


No matter how many job skills I get, someone else with a better personality will get the job

^^^have you considered hospital coding? it is a quiet job.

I'm on SSI now and it's not good because I feel like a loser. I have this lovely bachelor's degree but most jobs that would use my specific degree requires me to be physical and I cannot walk for long distances nor can I lift 50lbs, actually 20 is difficult for me. When I was working at jobs I could do in the past I was so happy! Now I'm a very miserable person. Not good!

Aunt blabby

No hospital coding

Ba cognitive science

AA accounting

35 years old

Almost braindead

Too lazy , apathetic, socially awkward, intimidated to change careers




Besides accounting is not too social either


And I can't find a job in accounting either