Hi,

I experence extreem anxiety and depression if I have to do simple, repetitive work day after day. This has been a problem for me over the years.
I have been out of work now for three years. I can't picture anything in my mind that I want to do for work. I'm really stuck. I couldn't come up with what I considered to be a ADHD friendly job so I tried to start a home business. It didn't work out. I make some money but not enought to live on. I am a Cad Drafter. I used to love drafting but now I hate it and I don't know why. I have an interview next week for a part time Cad Drafting position. The description of the job seems simple and repetitive. It would be for only fours a day but I am very anxious and depressed. I don't know what to do. I hate this condition so much. My wife says, "boy, would I love a job that I only had to work part time". People just don't get it.

This whole mess flared up about four years ago after I lost my job and my father died. But that's a different issue.

I am on anti-depressants, xanax and ritalin. My wife lost her job so I really need some money coming in.

I'm wondering if anyone else ever found themselves in this position and what they did about it.

Thanks

EBJ

EBJ,

I found myself in the same position about 1998.
I lost a six figure sales job that I had for 6 years. My wife was a stay home mom and our 3rd child was just 6 months old. We had been living fat and happy. Bought a NICE house, racked up a bunch of debt for furniture....just living the American dream on credit and borrowed time.

I was shattered! I was diagnosed about 8 months before I was fired. The unfortunate thing is that I knew the meds I was on were affecting my performance on the job. My stupid doctor advised against telling them i had ADD. Big mistake there. I could've at least had some recourse....

Anyway, from there I bounced from one sales job to the next. NEVER made enough money to pay even half our bills. We supplemented with money from my 401k until that ran out. Just in the nick of time I got another sales job that was actually working out. I was selling, my income was going back up and I was making about $8k per month. It lasted about 9 months........apparently I ticked off ANOTHER VP. I seem to have this nack for doing things that make them look stupid. Actually, it's not that what I do makes them look stupid....it just makes their stupidity visible to everyone else. (I don't know how to play the political game....go figure!)

I started my own business and that was good for about 18 months. Just when it started falling apart I got a full time salaried job as a Sales Engineer (using my sales and techno geek skills.) We used that "steady" income stream as an opportunity to downsize our house and moved into a much smaller and cheaper house...that we hate!

That job worked for 2 years until the WHOLE company fell apart and laid off thousands of people for Christmas in 2002.
The first 6 months of 2003 I lived on unemployment. But, at the same time I took a part time job as a webmaster for a local non-profit org making very little money but working 20hrs a week. It worked out that this job and unemployment paid the bills. And have SOME steady work really helped an otherwsie disappointed and depressed ME.
It also kept me busy so 20 hours a week I wasn't dwelling on the sky falling.
Since being laid off in 2002 I have worked contract consulting jobs and the variety was a good thing and a frustration.
But I kept forcing myself to make connections with other people and "network" as much as possible. After being in sales so long I really hated playing the networking game so this was actually HARDER for me than you would think.
The tiny bit of networking I could stomach kept me in contact with two people I REALLY have a lot of respect for in their work. Between the 3 of us we were able to keep each other busy by passing around job leads and just boosting the others morale when things were slow.
I guess the latest news in a REALLY long post is that at the start of this month I got hired on full time due to the networking friendship I had made.....it got me in the door as a consultant and I hyperfocused on making that into a FT job.....and I REALLY like the job and the team!

So, keep pushing yourself to do some of the things that you hate to get yourself to the next step. Eventually you will look back in amazement at all of the obstacles you overcame where most other people would have just given up. :D