Despair Towards Future Career

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Does anybody else feel a crushing despair at the thought of spending the rest of their life working a sh***y job for 40 hours a week just so you can afford to live on the weekends? Working for 8 hours a day to come home to an empty apartment and repeat forever until I die. How do you overcome this feeling?

What is your skillset? What is your highest level of education? If you have a college degree, what was your major? What kind of job do you have now?

Getting a job doing work that I enjoy makes me look forward to going to my job every day.

The only thing I am somewhat good at is graphic design, but even if I were able to get a good job doing it, I just feel like it would still make my brain go numb after 40 hours a week. Right now I work a job that boils down to answering phones for 8 hours straight all day and the constant talking to people with this repetitious script I go through makes me feel like I am genuinely losing my mind. I only went to college for two years and then quit.

Can your two years be converted to an Associate's Degree?

As a person who has sat on many hiring boards, I would likely never see your job application, much less interview you. Most professional positions are given to college graduates. The rest of the jobs are monotonous, repetitious, and are usually filled with people who only have a high school diploma or less.

I'm sorry, but unless you go into business for yourself, you are likely to be facing a long time in jobs that require little or no education.

Good luck.

Yes, there are quite a few forum participants who feel a crushing despair at the way their lives look to them, doing a job they never advance in nor enjoy.

But, that doesn't have to be you.

First of all, kudos for holding a job at all. Do you recognize that you are one of the winners among the autistic people? Many can only work a part-time shift or they lose full-time jobs regularly. Celebrate your victory.

Second, take advantage of any training opportunities offered by your company, and use this time of your life to develop people skills within your company. Work on committees, act as a mentor, and so on.

Third, you managed to complete two years of college. If you want to change to a more satisfying job, go back to school. No whining about "can't afford it" or anything. One class a semester, night school, scholarships, choosing a school that is less expensive, or even online education.

I'm pretty sure you are angling for people to agree that it's hopeless so you can go further into depression and maybe even toy with suicide. You won't get that kind of "support" from me.

@Bea: I'm glad that you're around to put the proper spin on things.

Thanks, @Fnord.

I wish I could tell you that it gets better.
It may or may not.

Maybe some volunteer work-- an hour or so on a weekend at a place that is interesting to you?

Sell graphic art stuff on the web?

Learn some coding stuff if you haven't already and sell yourself as a web designer?

Going back to school may or may not yield a better job-- I am "underemployed" and I understand that is a problem we face even if we do work fulltime.

When asked, I strongly encourage people to keep working if at all possible (rather than try for disability payments). That is also not an easy way to live.

A disproportionate number of autistics work as software engineer or unemployed.

Personally I have gotten made redundant a lot of times. Only worked at minimum wage jobs.

No job skills

AA accounting
BA cognitive science

35 years old


All the jobs I qualify for, all the other drug dealers and convicted felons and ghetto lil riffraff, also qualify for.

Autism, six personality disorders, clinical depression

Take your dog to work day

Afraid of dogs

Trans

Plenty of precious lil "people" are homophobic



Besides , 40 hours a week of minimum wage does not pay the bills


Even for the ghetto I live in




Despairing


Considered renting out rooms


Unearned income


Marry someone

I too have pondered the thought of being in the same job long term, though only having been in it for a few months, mastered the few menial tasks that it comes with: manual handling, repetitive tasks, and it's always the same unlike an office or software development job where style of programming might change or programs will always be different.

Software development/games programming is my career choice, despite previous attempts to learn my chosen language have failed, i can in theory do anything, only thing i lack is creativity and thats something that cannot be learned but comes naturally. Again what is required is time, experience in the field, and a degree (which i screwed up not too long ago). I find much of my time is taken from working long hours with not too many days off and feel a sense of responsibility towards my place of work, know too many people to just leave and not financially secure enough to fund my living costs before looking for another job.

And I am so dissociated that I could barely do the slightest thing

Nobody will hire my worthless corpse

Tired all the time

Would rather lie down than sit up

Suspect brain damage

My job is not particularly sh***y but it does nonetheless leave me mentally drained most days and when I first started working full time I did feel a "crushing despair" at what looked like an endless treadmill stretching away before me with no hope of escape.

However, after a while I came to accept that it was necessary to trade-in a proportion of my life in order to obtain the money I need to pursue my interests. Looking at it that way it seemed like an acceptable trade off and it still does even on days like today when my shift won't finish until 0100 tomorrow morning. There aren't really any realistic alternatives for the vast majority of people. Not being able to pursue my interests fully due to lack of money would be a far worse outcome.

My job required a 2 year tech degree and I was lucky to be hired. I don't want to stay in my career though, it's very hazardous and I couldn't support a family with my income (although I can save).

I'm not as inclined to tell people to pick a path that matches their interests. I think a better approach is to pick something you can at least tolerate, and learn to develop an interest in it. All the the career paths that people are easily passionate about have more people to compete with, so unless you can do something all the other artists, psychologists, or historians can't do, then you'll be in a poor position to bargain your pay or working conditions if you do get the job.

I think our best prospects boil down to engineering, computer science, and the trades; all of those careers pay well. The trades path doesn't always look stable though, I know people who could not stay on that career path in spite of their best efforts. I also hear about computer scientists struggling to keep up with the pace of change. Engineers seem to enjoy the best job security.

An unpleasant lifetime job is better than a lifetime of living on the streets.

Be thankful that you even have a job.

Entrepreneurship.

Working an 8 hour a day job leaves 16 hours a day for yourself. That is quite an opportunity.

I worked 4 decades at my job. Every day I learned new things. Because I was so good at solving things, every sh***y job they came up with they gave to me. And I solved it. I became one of their most valuable employees because of my unlimited skill set.

And there was my life outside of work. There was always a million things to do and to learn.

I remember one of the new hires at work. He had been their 6 months and his supervisor had problems with this employee and so they traded him for one of my best employees. I had a piece of equipment that was new and was partly destroyed in the calibration lab. Everyone I tasked with fixing it came back and said it was impossible. So when I was given this new employee, I tasked him with fixing it. I told him it was impossible. Well he had it working within a couple days. Thereafter, every time I gave him a new task, I would always add that the task was impossible. He would always accomplish it.