This is really strictly for my own curiosity. I'm thinking of what new path to take and I have this problem with wanting to be and do 100 different things. And I have to know what everyone else does. It's just like when I'm at a restaurant with group of people. I have to ask everyone what they're getting, and I change my mind 10 times before ordering!

So here is my question:

Does anyone have a job they really LOVE? I mean LOVE like the pros way outeight the cons, and you feel lucky that you're actually getting paid to do it.

And if so, what do you do, and how did you get into doing it?

(and in case that situation doesn't exist in real life, does anyone have a job they really LIKE A LOT? :p )

I'm one of those! I wish I had more time to do my job cause there's so much I want to do. That said, it hasn't always been like this. A lot of it has for me had to do with getting the recognition and trust you deserve from your superior. Especially trust. And flexibility and freedom. But that comes with trust.

I'm a software engineer in the software testing field. My job has 3 high level goals.
1. Measuring quality of the software.
2. Actively finding ways to break and hack our software.
3. Guiding the general testing strategies and timeline for my product.

What's great is that the possibilities on how to achieve these goals are endless, and it's really thrilling to come up with awesome strategies, tools, processes that nobody else thought of but you did cause you think outside the box cause of the ADD. The ADD has some clear advantages in my job though the downside definitely outweighs the good.

Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun right now, and the rewards are, erm, rewarding!

I scored my job when I was in college; got an internship, then flunked out of college and started full time for the company. WHew! I'm super lucky that I had my foot in the door before everything fell apart.

im in the process of trying to find a career that suits me and that i liek so at the meantime im getting bored sh**less working as a cashier..yep suicide has almost been an option ;) whats there to do..
ive been accepted at three different unis but changed my mind about all of them at the last minute..it helps that i managed to do quite well at school by hyerfocusing on studying the night before the test or leaving the assigment to the day before...it actually made school a litle more thrilling lol. managed to get top marks too..somehow

I loved my job when I started, pay was good, job was interesting and challenging, the people were great... man it WAS awsome...

but after 4 years... I should be getting paid more then I do, I know everything about it there for its boring and unchallenging, but the people are still great... thats why im still there.

but I think thats how any "Job" is.. after a while it stops becoming fun and turns back into a job.. now thats not to say you cant find one that is tollerable, but when it comes down to it you still have to go there even on days you dont feel like it in order to get paid.. which ultimatly sucks.

probably true in most jobs, but not all. Mine started out badly and it became fun. One of the best parts is that I have tons of flexibility. This week I started at 10am on Monday, 12:30 pm on tuesday, worked from home wednesday, 10:30 am today. As long as I get things done and that I'm there when people depend on me. My job is different every day; never ever a routine, which is both good and bad. Good because you don't ever get bored, bad because routines are way easier.

I have to say though that my meds made my job a lot more interesting.

This is really strictly for my own curiosity. I'm thinking of what new path to take and I have this problem with wanting to be and do 100 different things. And I have to know what everyone else does. It's just like when I'm at a restaurant with group of people. I have to ask everyone what they're getting, and I change my mind 10 times before ordering!
Me, to a tee....

I've had several careers/jobs, and I went into all of them with the best of intentions, but ultimately and without fail, I became bored with them, and moved to something new. My resume is the epitome of career/job-jumping.

I think the best thing you can do is to try to find work in doing something you love to do, if you know what that is and whatever that may be, regardless of the money. I don't know if it would have made a difference for me (I'm 47), but I wish I had been able to see that way back when. Because of my inablility to make decisions, I listened to what others thought I should do and now I'm in a career that I'm ill-suited for, but because of my financial responsibilities, am stuck in. (I'm not blaming others here, just explaining how I made my choices) I'm not money motivated, but I'm in a career that is all about the money, so I struggle on a daily basis to care, or be interested.

Anyway, my advice about jobs/careers to others is to always follow your heart, which is harder than it sounds especially for folks with our issues.

:) Hi there!

Pedalpounder, you are one lucky man. It's a beautiful thing to be able to do work you actually enjoy.

4Got, newbie and wandering, I can relate to aspects of what you all wrote. I was an insurance underwriter for almost 8 years. Not exactly the kind of work that makes you leap out of bed every day. It was okay at first. I loved making an actual decent salary (I grew up very poor), and I worked with some okay people. The corporate culture there was pretty frustrating, but overall it wasn't terrible.

Until I started getting the fatigue and weakness and my brain starting moving at a snail's pace. I've always had trouble retaining info and concentrating, but the fibromyalgia added all kinds of cognitive problems to the mix!

Now that I've been out of work for a while I realize I can live on less money and I really want to find something that 1) I can actually do, and 2) will be something that makes me feel like I'm actually doing some good or making a difference somehow. That way it'll be worth the stress and energy expenditure.

Yes I have a job I LOVE !!!

I'm a school bus driver and I've kept this one job for almost 17 years ! That's a record for me.... ;)

My job title is skills trainer. We are a day service that takes in Devolopmently disabled adults and we try to educate them and the surounding people in the comunity on ways to ineract with one another by taking our consumers on daily outings. We also provide recreational activities thru out the day at our center for them. this can include arts and crafts, exersizes, and cooking. it can be very frustrating but also very rewarding.

so desperate did you find the job that you liked? what do you mean by the corporate culture? I dont really like the culture at my work either, people are always gossiping about everyting and alot of the time im the butt of it as I am a little different, kinda say the wrong thing sometimes without realising. had so many people who are nice to my face and then i find out they have been talking about me..might be why i find it hard to get close to people..?
i agree...Being happy is way more important than getting paid heaps if you hate the job.
fast talking mom glad u love your job - im sure ur alot nicer than some of the crabby drivers we have around here.
had another "sick" day today...feel guilty but couldnt handle going through the same crap again. i think im on the verge of getting fired. had more sick days that entitled for etc and always late to work. keep missing busses, get sidetracked etc etc

oh well...

fasttalkingmom, that's so great! I still remember my favorite bus driver when I was really little. She was the best and we all loved her! Do you drive young kids or older?

lunaslobo, I am SUPER jealous. That sounds like a job I would LOVE. How'd you get into it and did you go to school for it or get certified in something? (If you don't mind my asking).

4got: ugh, corporate culture, I don't miss it. Well, people get promoted if they were well liked, management knew less than their employees, upper management didn't practice what they preach, the gossip mill was out of control, etc. I benefited in ways I probably shouldn't have, like my first manager really liked me so she promoted me over people who had been there for a lot longer, and I got very good raises and was given a lot of responsibility, because I "faked" it really well for a long time, but like I said, I really did fake it because after 8 years I couldn't go back tomorrow and do my job. I retained nothing. And I wasn't doing nearly as good a job as they thought.

I'm sorry things seem to be going poorly for you, and I hope it gets better. But remember, when one door closes, another opens, so maybe you can move on to something you will like better and it will be a positive experience. Might not seem like it now, but maybe it will.

I am interested in what the ADD crowd does and enjoys... maybe I can copy cause I am thinking of entering the finance world after grad' degree.

I was a busines systems/operations analyst and loved it cause:
- the interaction w' people: I interviewed, led the conversation and topics. I learned that people trusted me and talked w' me. One on one is the best people interaction for me.
- find interelations of processes: study information flow within an organization
- creativity: goes w'out saying
- The report writing wasn;t so bad because it was mostly template and diagrams. So it was easier for me than writing a 50 page report out of thin air (beyond me how people do that).

I was a projects manager
- Nice: travelled the world
-People interaction: didn;t enjoy that part much. I felt like a babysitter
wan;t a very good deligator (at all)
- Good: I never sat down for more than 1/2 hr, I always had GREAT excuses to walk around and talk to different parties of the project.
- I had great ppl working w' me (including my boss) who knew that after a certain point into the meeting I would zone out - and that was that (was a great incentive to keep meetings shorter :)

Hope this helps someone and again would love to hear about everybody elses careers in relation to your ADD - it would help us now career choosers A LOT!

Okay, tryn, first off, I bow down in awe at the organized structure of your post :)

wish i knew a darned thing about computers or numbers. some people really seem to love programming and analyst jobs!

desperate..we have the same thing happening where i work, people that are liked get to do whatever they want. ive asked numerous times to go to another department which would suit me better cuz i could move around and feel accomplishment in my job, they would say yes but someone else would want to go work in that department and they always got it. it would really peev me off, i only started getting depression since working at this job. thanks for the advice. im hoping that once i start taking meds things will get better and more controlled, at the moment seems like everything is spiralling out of control.
do you work at the moment desperate? do you take meds?

4gotAgain - great username and avatar!

thanks :) i really liked it..they have some really good avatars on avatarHell.com.

Awesome, thanks for the tip.

do you work at the moment desperate? do you take meds?
:( I work at home right now doing transcription. A friend got me the job and I was very, very lucky to have gotten it. It's not nearly enough $, but it is work, and I can sort of make my own hours.

I just started on Adderall. In two weeks I will be switched to Provigil, and then the doctor might combine the two.

My confidence is shot right now. Between ADD and fibro brain fog, I feel stupid and disorganized. And the weakness, stiffness and aching from fibro make it hard to type sometimes, and then I feel even more useless because I have the easiest job in the world and sometimes I can't do it.

It really takes its toll on my confidence. Right now the thought of going to work in a big office is scary, even though I've done it before. Hopefully I will find a medication that helps enough!

That's why I posted this thread, to see what people are doing, how they like it, and to start gathering ideas of what I really want to do once I get back on my feet, so to speak. I really think I want to do something where I make a difference to someone.

I have never found a job I liked. With ADD, I never was sure of myself. I always had to see what job someone else had. I always wanted jobs that others had.

I realized that ADD makes me love the IDEA of things but I do not like actually trying to get it or doing it. ADD makes me not think things through at all. I just DON'T think.

A major symptom of ADD (without hyperactivity which is what I have) is feeling overwhelmed very easily. That is why I like to sit back and watch everything instead of really getting involved. I've learned that I am a total follower and never would want to be a leader. I am a "behind the scenes" person and never want to be in the front lines.

Part of me wants to hide and do low-level, easy things behind the scenes because with ADD, I mess up details and other things. So in order not to be ridiculed, I prefer behind the scenes activities.

Being hidden prevents me from making ADD mistakes (like sitting out of a volleyball game or softball game during a social event, or doing a simple task in the back office instead of being a salesperson in the front of the store, for instance) and feels much better.

Almost every job I ever had put me in the front lines somehow. I never felt comfortable anywhere. I am also unmedicated (soon will be, though.) I have been freed from the workplace because I'm a stay at home mom now and though that has its own challenges, I am relieved not to have to try and find a job or try to fit myself into a job that sounded good from my friend!

I hope that makes sense. The kids are in the background jumping from my desk onto the couch and as always, it's distracting, thus making my posts more confusing. :o

I have never found a job I liked. With ADD, I never was sure of myself. I always had to see what job someone else had. I always wanted jobs that others had.

I realized that ADD makes me love the IDEA of things but I do not like actually trying to get it or doing it. ADD makes me not think things through at all. I just DON'T think.

A major symptom of ADD (without hyperactivity which is what I have) is feeling overwhelmed very easily. That is why I like to sit back and watch everything instead of really getting involved. I've learned that I am a total follower and never would want to be a leader. I am a "behind the scenes" person and never want to be in the front lines.

Part of me wants to hide and do low-level, easy things behind the scenes because with ADD, I mess up details and other things. So in order not to be ridiculed, I prefer behind the scenes activities.

Being hidden prevents me from making ADD mistakes (like sitting out of a volleyball game or softball game during a social event, or doing a simple task in the back office instead of being a salesperson in the front of the store, for instance) and feels much better.

Almost every job I ever had put me in the front lines somehow. I never felt comfortable anywhere. I am also unmedicated (soon will be, though.) I have been freed from the workplace because I'm a stay at home mom now and though that has its own challenges, I am relieved not to have to try and find a job or try to fit myself into a job that sounded good from my friend!

I hope that makes sense. The kids are in the background jumping from my desk onto the couch and as always, it's distracting, thus making my posts more confusing. :oEverything you just said is me 100% I completely understand your pain. My whole adult life so far I have avoided challenging jobs, which is why currently the only employment I have is cleaning the floors in a daycare center in the evenings. Yea, it makes me feel like a deadbeat loser compared to the rest of my family, but atleast I dont have to deal with people, which is a relief.

I do plan to change that though once I find the right medication.

May I suggest Human Resources?

HR is an area with such a vast variety of roles and responsibilities that it actually does cater to ADHD.

Here's some background about how I got into HR:

I initially went into college with the mindset that I was going to go for accounting. Business interested me and there is a strong history of accounting in my family. Once I took my first accounting class, I just about stopped going. It was terribly boring. I knew that crunching numbers at a desk is not what I wanted to get into, despite my love for math and numbers.

I made my choice to go into HR by researching the various business majors and deciding that HR was the major that most fit my interests. There are so many different areas and functions of HR that I could either go the generalist route and just be well versed in everything, so I could become a specialist in an area. There is a great deal of interaction with people.

Being that my whole life I've thought that I could never focus in on a specific area and specialize in that. I've alrways just been very good at a lot of things, never great in one particular area. So I went with Hr because of it's broad range of responsibilities. This was before I even started thinking I might have ADHD and about 5-6 years before I was diagnosed.

I received my degree in HR and started working in the HR Dept. of a large pharma company last February. I love what I do. I am the first point of contact for employees to contact HR in reference to payroll, benefits, retirement, and policies. No 2 days are ever the same.

However it is this job that I came to actually realize that I might have ADHD. I was unable to prioritize properly and started becoming overwhelmed by inability to focus properly various tasks. I sought help and was diagnosed with ADHD. I now take Adderall and see a psychologist.

I'm very happy with my career choice and even happier since having my eyes opened to my ADHD.