Hi All,

I started a new part time job today. It's only for four hours a day but it is really a dull job. I am a Cad (computer assisted design) Drafter. My boss drops off prints that need to be changed and updated and that's what I do. No one bothers me or watches over me. It could be such a sweet position if it were not for this dammed ADD. I just hate it so much. I noticed that the person before me left a pair of head phones connected to the computer so I know that it's ok to listed to music. That might help.

I remember when I was a young man. I had such a rich inner life. I could do the same thing over and over for an eight hour shift and not become the least bit bored. What time of the day it was was never an issue. I didn't feel like I just wanted to get out of there. My mind would wander and I would day dream. I worked in a factory and my favorite job was feeding thin sheet metal parts into a straightening machine one at a time. I loved it.

Then some where along the way something changed. I became an apprentice tool maker. The work was fun and challenging. I had to work within thousands of an inch. I had to keep myself completly focused on what I was doing or I could ruin several days worth of work at the cost of thousands of dollars. I loved it.

That was the turning point. If things got slow at work I would be put back on the jobs that I used to love. I hated it. I couldn't stand the boredom and repetition. Time felt like it was crawling by and it was agonizing, literally.
I would become nauseous and would have dizzy spells. I couldn't cope.

I don't really know what prompted me to share this stuff. I do know that I would like to go back to having a rich inner life. A life where I could just let go and let my mind wander. I'm 54, my kids are grown, I own my home and don't have a mortgage. I'd like to just coast until retirement. But, there's this dammed ADD. If it isn't fun and stimulating I can't cope.

Thanks for letting me share

EBJ

EBJ, I am only 22 but i can COMPLETELY relate - when I was younger I could do the most boring dull jobs that everyone else hated and love every second of it. I used to work at a bakery where I bagged bread and boxed pies - I made games out of trying to keep up with the baker and stuff like that. I could make almost anything into some kind of a game.... I walked to school from kindergarten through 12th grade - I used to talk to myself and daydream the whole time; I was never bored walking home even in middle school when it was 45 minutes away. I loved long car rides more than anything - what kind of a kid loves long car rides????

But then I've had a couple of internships in the automotive industry (as a mechanical engineer) and let me tell you - when there was nothing to do I could have died. teh minutes dragged on and on as if the clock was going backwards. Last year I worked for a company which makes the welding robots for the automotive industry, and there where a bunch of times when I got to go to collect some data at the BMW factory... a bunch of people from my company went (5 times total) and we counted the number of spot welds which "sparked" during each run. There was a lot of downtime, so it always took all day ... in that in between time I could have died.

I got dizzy and sick in the head, and kept half-falling asleep, dropping my pencil, and stuff like that. It was HORRIBLE!!! The only way I could keep from getting dizzy and losing my balance was to talk to somebody or somthing like that. I don't know what happened to my daydreaming skills!!!

And as for the spark-counting itself - talk about an "anti-ADD" job - it was basically EXACTLY like the test they give you where you have to pay atttention the whole time and they count the number of mistakes you make. I've never taken that test but counting how often a robot sparks is pretty much exactly the same thing. One of my co-workers knew I had ADD and so he always assigned me the easiest robot (the one with the least welds) - at first I was kind of upset that he thought I couldn't handle it, but I am SOOOO happy that he did becuase I seriously don't think I could have handled one of the others which didn't have a break. (in the 1-minute break between parts I could quickly double check to make sure I had counted the right nubmer of welds)

Anyway I just wanted to say I feel for you - especially with the dizzyness thing. I had no idea boredom could be so physical. I'm working at Porsche right now, and whenever I have to wait a while in the plant all that dizziness feelings come rushing back in a second. I know It's not fumes or anything like that either, becuase the second I have something "real" to do it's gone. That and no one else feels it.