ADHD

Something my wife once told me that really stuck with was;

Your job is just how you afford to pay for the things you like to do.

And that really helped me to reframe how I view my working life.

At the time I was a welder, earning reasonable, but not mind-blowing money, doing a job that I never really liked. I hated coming home filthy every night, I hated sweating my arse off during the warm months, freezing it off when it was cold, because you can't carry out my line of work in an air conditioned office. After she told me that, it helped me to look at my work life from a different angle, which bizarrely had the effect of chilling me the fuck out, to the point that, while I didn't love what I was doing, I came to accept that I was good at it. And if I didn't like it, I had the power to find a job doing something else. Hell, I could stack shelves at a supermarket for only a little less than I was earning at the time.

Then I got promoted into the office, because that mindset change apparently made me a more reliable worker.

I've been with this company for five years now, and have managed to wiggle into a space where my job is neither one thing nor another. One day I'll be devising training plans for the guys on the shop floor, the next I'm creating valuable documentation that they need, then I'm helping out the Health & Safety manager with audits. And while I don't love working here, I've finally got to a place where I can see a future where I'm not in my 60s, clambering about under rusty old railway wagons, welding up cracks, fucking my back and knees.

I have been there. More jobs than years on the planet. Dozens of hobbies and interests picked up and put down. Four changes of majors in college. It was frustrating and exhausting.

And then this miraculous thing happened: all of that knowledge and all of those skills coalesced into what I needed to build my own business. Each thing I picked up along the way I needed to learn and had no better way to learn them.

That six weeks of fascination with photography gave me the skills to do my own product photography. Eight weeks of obsession with graphic design made my website beautiful. The two week rabbit hole I went down on light and lighting became the basis of my whole business. Each area of study for the four attempts over 19 years it took to get my degree gives me a huge advantage over my competitors that only understand one subject. Two tax seasons of tax preparation prepared me for handling my own taxes. Retail work gave me the skills in purchasing and planning. Customer service is the single most useful skill set I have ever acquired.

I really could go on, but I am now boring myself. My personal goal for my life was to set up a way to support myself while accepting and accommodating my neurodivergence. It took me a long time to gather all of the knowledge I needed to achieve that, but damn when it all came together it was awesome.

My point is that nothing you are doing, or have done, is a waste. It all adds up. It is all useful. It will all add up into something worthwhile. Hell, you would do really well selling hobbyist stuff. You have familiarity with so many different kinds of hobbies and interests you could assemble an amazing storefront.

Hi friend, you got this.

I've been exactly there, and you got this.

Obviously, there's a lot going on here, so right off the bat:

Give yourself time to change, don't expect everything to be different right away. Every day, what you do adjusts your ship's direction like maybe 1° lol. Maybe 0.0001°.

The goal is to eventually be aiming somewhere that you like, but it's okay if you're having trouble steering today. If you had a shit day yesterday, and you steered 3° the wrong way... It's okay. Today, it's time to steer a tiny bit back. Just a bit of work. Tomorrow hopefully a little more work, we'll find out when we get there.

Good luck, captain!

It's okay to ask for help with this. Therapy is professionally trained help so that's extra good, but asking someone you trust for support can make a big difference.

I'M SERIOUS THOUGH, IT'S YEARS MAYBE DECADES OF GENTLE STEERING. WORKING SLOWLY BUT SURELY. GOOD LUCK CAPTAIN.

So two things helped me, and maybe they'll help you too.

1. LOOK FOR GOOD ENOUGH.
2. WHAT IF CHAOS WAS THE GOAL?

Might make you feel better, I'm almost 30 and all I can say about myself is: oh no
...because I've only had an unpaid internship at a car dealership (many years ago).

I think the only hope I'd have is if I could find somewhere better to live without money (such as an intentional community) but even if what little I can regularly do now were acceptable/desired enough to get room and board, because of health (body and brain) I don't know if I could even be reliable enough for that. I feel like I'd need to mesh well with the community too, and as an oddball shut-in even pre-2020 I don't have high hope for that. Plus I don't expect to find all this within biking distance (I'm in a somewhat rural area (USA)).

I don't (think I) have ADHD though, instead SchizoidPD/depression (but who knows w/brains though, eh?)... though I'm in a similar spot with hobbies (and never did enough personal projects to get actual skill/anything to show).

The only advice I can give you is this:

1. Try to create habits that you do consistently.
2. You should try therapy and go from there.

I've changed careers. Started out in health care, now I'm working in energy. Now I'm learning coding on the side.

Get a STEM degree like mechanical engineering or physics or math. Then you can just move into different careers as your interests change. Do you know how many varying jobs have those degree prereqs? You can do all sorts of different stuff.

Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters had an extremely varied career. Look him up.

Having a KnowledgeBase as vast as you with all sorts of different experiences will be extremely valuable to the right company.

You didn't mention if you were taking medication. Are you? Might help as well.

Instead of looking at yourself, for what you enjoy, perhaps look at a career that benefits from how you are wired. I would encourage you to look at the start up world, where learning new things on behalf of the team that you’re in is how you all win. Solving problems is super fun, and changes constantly. Good luck!

I'm chronically ill and I have ADHD. I can't work right now, but I suspect that if I ever get to work, I will probably do a lot of different things over time. Sounds fun. If I had to do the same thing my whole life, I'd be more depressed.

You might do well being self-employed in some way. That way, you have greater flexibility in changing "fields".

To echo @_Rook_, I think therapy would also be useful here. Maybe even some kind of medication adjustment.

Pick whichever career that you can handle that pays the most. Use that money to continue learning and dropping hobbies.

I'm not sure if this is an answer as much as reassurance but I have the same issue as you. However, I'm luckily in a job I like. It's not because of the actual job. It's just a desk job where I fill out forms and maybe make some phone calls and do some money movement requests.

But I like it because of the people I work with. My boss treats me like a human. It's a small office (5 people including me and boss). My co-workers are nice. And it just has a good vibe. I never get stressed because we can always fix everything. That's the motto my boss has.

And before that, I worked at Walmart. Honestly. It was mixed. I really liked a few of my coworkers. We really got along and it really helped me enjoy going to work. But also I would have stress at night that I might have forgotten to wipe crumbs off one table which would be cause for write up after a couple times.

Its not like I planned for any of those. They just kinda happened. I'm not passionately writing programs or creating art/logos with lots of love or stuff like that. But I do feel fulfilled because I can do that stuff on my time off. And it doesn't matter that my hobby changes every month since it's my hobby and not something tied to my employment.

And if you do get a job where you're actually miserable at, don't be afraid to move. Some people I've seen seem to think you can only change jobs if you're fired or let go. But you can always look around until you find a place that works for you.

Therapy was a great help in framing in my brain what I wanted to get out of a job. I then started looking at fields that are constantly changing and evolving as well as ones where there would be a fair amount of research and learning. Tech, medical, marketing, journalism, etc

Day to day style jobs didn’t work for me. Essentially doing the same thing everyday was like pulling teeth.

I landed in tech/marketing and my day to day tasks are so varied and the digital marketing field has so many options for what you can focus(or not) on that it keeps me changing, learning, and researching. With all that, at the end of the day I don’t love my job… but it pays for my hobbies.

#1 tip - therapy

A few people have mentioned this, but it's worth reiterating: take advantage of your strongest skills and focus on a career that keeps things interesting. I work as an analyst (data and reporting), and I get paid to solve problems and dig deep into unique projects where the major structure of my tasks are defined around me. My job description is nebulous, and that's how I like it. It means I don't get bored. I thrive when I can hyperfocus on novelty, and there's always something new to explore and learn at my job.

As folks with ADHD, our constant cycling of interests tends to make us a jack of all trades, master of none. That is absolutely a marketable trait, and not only in the field of data analytics (though based on your interests you might do really well in it). I don't think passion is necessary in a day job, though it helps. I believe the more important thing is finding an environment where you'll never be bored.

I also want to add, there's no pressure to pick the right path the first time around. In fact, I think having a wide variety of experiences in life can be an asset. Heck, I have a wildlife science degree and experience with seabird research. While I'm glad I had those experiences, and my passion for wildlife is still as strong, I'm not certain that's the best path for my career right now. Maybe that'll change, but it's okay to not have it figured out, especially in our 20's.

I absolutely consider ADHD to be a disability for me, but I'm always having to remind myself of the strengths I have because of, or maybe in spite of it.

To give a concrete example of a job* where you're doing all the things all the time (at least in my experience) is office manager at a start up company. It doesn't sound glorious, but it's super varied!

I currently do, among things I'll forget to mention :

• invoicing and payments
• basic accounting
• hr
• day to day office running (making sure we have supplies, watering the plants, organising lunch, answering operational questions)
• set up and maintain the company knowledge database and teach people how to use it
• same for client database
• event planning (fairs, team building, company parties)
• organise courses and learnings
• research
• agenda keeping for the CEO
• man the phone
• random things that you can't really pin down like remind people to clean their desk (we don't have a cleaning service), run to the supermarket because it's hot and the boss is buying us ice cream, give info to new employees moving to the country on where to buy the best coffee)

It's never boring and also not stressful (for me, I thrive on organising thing).

*I don't know if this is a career. Personally I just want to go to work, work, go home and get paid to have money to do the things I like. I don't need fancy new title or promotions that come with more responsibilities and stress.