Published on 12, July, 2020
I know that the same old question about suitable jobs for autistic people comes up time and time again, so I apologise up front
I'm in my early 50's and have always worked in IT, most often on the technical side (dev). I was pushed out of my previous job earlier this year due to my conditions (chronic fatigue, ASD, FND + more). That job was a mix of development and business analysis, working on a very niche technology. I loved that job, but I became unreliable, having to take a lot of time off and my boss didn't know whether I would be fit to work from one day to the next.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when I started a new job for a local authority working as a business analyst (no technical "getting your hands dirty").I'm now starting to question whether being a pure BA is really my thing. Also, having always worked in the private sector, moving into local authority is a completely different beast (still not sure whether it is something that I will completely embrace or completely hate).
So now, after only a couple of weeks, I am starting to ponder whether I am in the right job, and if the answer is a resounding "No", then there are a number of barriers to me being a success doing something else, including...
What I do excel at (or some may say, disabled by) is my attention to detail.I'm your typical grammar police guy, but I do manage to exercise self restraint rather than pulling people up on social media regarding their inability to distinguish between "there, their and they're" or "lose & loose". Nonetheless, it does really trigger me in my mind and it distracts me from the bigger picture (I struggle to understand a piece of text because I am too caught up on what to me is a glaring error).If you've got this far, thank you for hearing me out - hopefully you cam give me some pointers?
I'm sorry I don't know what to suggest. I have found myself in a very similar situation. Having been long term sick I was in a position where I would have been forced to go through occupational health again. Reading the crystal ball, I felt that this could only result in one outcome: eventual dismissal on health grounds. Possibly I might have been better off financially if I had submitted to that process, but felt that my mental health would have suffered further through stress in the months it would have taken to get there. So, I chucked it in to spare myself. I was in the fortunate position of having a smallish pension to help myself keep my head above water for a while.I also hate grammatical/syntactic/orthographic/typographic errors. I try not to get distracted, but I can't help it! A little while ago, I bought an album, the cover of which had a (to me) glaring typographic error. I had to edit the JPEG and replace the embedded picture in the digital files, so that I wasn't offended every time I listened. I guess that many people wouldn't spot the problem. You can see the original here: 'round midnightGood luck!
Ha Ha - yep spotted it after maybe 5 seconds.Maybe I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't have the two images to compare, but then it has been a long day!