Just wondering if anyone has any career advice for me, or if I am doomed!
Background - I'm in my early 40s, haven't worked for around 13yrs due to being on maternity leave / carer for my disabled child. My youngest is coming up for a year old, and my disabled child is now of an age where his disability is a bit easier to manage, and I'm wondering what on earth I'm going to do employment wise!
I have a degree in engineering, though I graduated over 20yrs ago and tbh, I'd struggle to remember anything relevant. I did work in a sort of related field, but nothing much that would be relevant for a similar job nowadays.
I potentially have a year or two to retrain in something before I'm intending going back to work, but I'm unsure what would be my best option. Ideally something with the potential for a good salary (though not sure how realistic that would be, re-entering job market mid-forties with not much relevant experience!), and ideally something with the option of working from home / being freelance. I should also add I have an illness that has the potential for chronic fatigue in the future (though not definitely), hence why I'm thinking something with the potential to be flexible / self-employed. Another thing I should add is that I suspect I have Aspergers, and prefer working alone and am really not a "leader" type.
I'm not really sure what I'm good at! I've lost a lot of confidence over the years. I did enjoy maths & chemistry at school, love quantum physics, dabbled a bit in programming (made my own website back in the day when you had to know HTML from scratch), enjoy being creative (knitting, sewing, drawing etc, but wouldn't say I was good at it or "arty"). Jobs I've enjoyed in the past were rather mundane filing type admin things, although I did find them boring and felt I could have been stretched so much more. Teaching is a no-no. I probably function best when I have clear, set goals and am left to get on with it. I am really good at focusing on one thing for long periods of a time (I research the hell out of things), but don't cope well when trying to do too many things at once.
I have considered accountancy, but think it might bore me, computer programming, but not sure if I actually would be any good at it, and indexing, but not sure if that's still a skill that will be required 10-20yrs in the future, or if it's easy to get in to (seems to require a lot of networking?).
So, is there anything career wise I should be considering, or is my wish list too unrealistic? Am I destined to a crappy minimum wage job?? Any ideas anyone?