What work do you do?

[TeaSoakedDisasterMagnet]

I'm really struggling with my job at the moment. My manager is the sort of person who will spring a task on me and set a fairly unreasonable deadline.

I'm struggling to cope with the constant chopping and changing and unpredictable nature of this manager. It is honestly exhausting.

I enjoy predictable work, with a pattern, that doesn't have a huge amount of unpredictable social contact with the general public. I can cope with the general public but not all day every day. I have a degree, but its an arts and humanities subject. I would love to work in that general field but i don't know what to look for these days.

What job do you do and do you enjoy it?

I wish I could help you with your question but, I'm in the same situation too. I need to change my overly stressful but ridiculously underpaid childcare career and I have no idea what to do :(
I'm not even expecting to find the job of my life which I love and enjoy but I would be more than grateful if it's just a job where I go and do whatever I need to do and not think about it at the end of the shift or wake up from my sleep with stress and full of work thoughts.
I want to work to live, not live to work.

I’m sorry you also feel the same way. It’s exhausting and upsetting isn’t it? I definitely also want to work to live etc.

Self employment. You’re either working from home, or you have an office but can control who you work with and who comes in. You set your own workload and manage your own deadlines. Don’t get hung up on what qualifications you’ve got - you can do stuff that’s unrelated to your qualifications. Sell stuff on Etsy, do graphic design or marketing, handle social media for other companies, do copywriting, etc.

I'm the stereotype - software developer. Since I discovered that I'm autistic, I've had three jobs....first were brilliant about it (a startup I was involved with from the beginning, and we were all just a group that clicked instantly), second were just generally assholes (they actually fired one of my team as soon as I joined as team leader for, essentially, autistic behaviour dressed up as poor performance, in the full knowledge that he's autistic), and my current lot are...well, a bit of a mixed bag. My team (I'm no longer lead, didn't like it) are brilliant, but the culture outside the dev team isn't one I'm compatible with - very much a macho "sales bro" environment (for want of a better expression - the women are just as enthusiastic about it as the men).

I do, however, work from home; that's non-negotiable for me, I just can't cope with an office environment, and I've worked from home for the last 15 years or so.

Do I love it, though? I know I used to. These days, with 20+ years of it behind me...it's just something I'm good at. After a lot of analysis and comparison, my particular flavour of autism lets me almost instantly "conceptualise" (not really "visualise") pretty much any system in its entirety, which is obviously a major advantage and gives me an instinctive and instant understanding of problems that most people have to slog their way through; the only real difficulty comes when people want me to explain how I got to the answer (which I often can't).

The problem is that, in terms of paying work, there's very little out there that's both interesting and lucrative, so I've pretty much opted for the latter. I can pretty much coast along without a huge amount of effort while still providing decent value-for-money to my employer relative to other developers, so I don't feel particularly bad about it.

Can't see myself sticking with it for another couple of decades, though. The rough plan is to stick it out for another 5-10 years, and get enough money behind me that I can take a year off and build something I'm really proud of.

@ntmdino thanks for your answer. I’m beginning to wonder if working from home will be better for me. During Covid I worked from home and found it much more comfortable and this week, I’ve been ill and working from home most days. I feel much more relaxed and less strung out.

@Spirro whilst I get what you’re trying to say but I don’t think you can just “do graphic design” and working for yourself is probably not as easy as you make it sound.

I have adhd and work in a public sector design-y role (without being too specific). It’s very varied which suits me, I need that to feel motivated. I am also good at it and I can see (literally) the impact my work has, which again helps with my slacking tendencies! It’s pretty well paid but I’d like to climb the ranks until I’m in a secure and REALLY well paid role that would let me work less hours overall. I mostly wfh which I prefer for practical reasons but occasionally I get a bit lonely and want yo go in to see colleagues face to face.
I echo what a pp said about self employment, in that its not easy to make a living wage that way. In areas like copywriting, social media etc you are competing with people thousands of miles away who will work for basically nothing. Also, a lot of the low-hanging content work has gone, or will soon go, as a result of AI.

I pigeon holed myself into office work for years, it was hideous for me. I have ASD and ADHD. I finally switched jobs two years ago to being a hospital porter. It was such a good decision. I really enjoy my job. The social side with patients might not be everyone's cup of tea but I don't mind that. I get to walk about all day which is great for my ADHD and I don't have a boss breathing down my neck pointing out all my mistakes. I work mostly with men which I find easier than working with an office full of women.