Published on 12, July, 2020
I have recently retired from work. It was long awaited and I have not missed the job at all ( the people I worked with were nice, but the job itself had become a mixture of stressful and tedious)
I have never particularly enjoyed working. I have got some sense of satisfaction from doing a job well during certain periods of my working life, but in most jobs I had there were people - mostly managers - who I really did not enjoy spending my days with. I get bored quickly and so jobs became mundane in a short period of time, and if I put myself forward to do higher level tasks (that I was capable of) I was either refused the role or ended up doing the higher level stuff without getting the extra pay for it. And I've suffered burn out from time to time due to the stress of work making me exhausted.
I know that a lot of autistic people are unable to work but would like to, and that many people get a sense of self worth from working and a better lifestyle (due to having wages) But I feel that society may over value work in some ways, and that maybe it programmes us to think that not working is lazy or unproductive? However there are some wealthy people who do little to no work and nobody calls them lazy. I heard a saying somewhere that I like: "we're human beings, not human doings". Perhaps that's a good answer next time someone asks - "so, what do you do?"
I just wondered what everyone's views were about working?
If you currently work, would you give up working if you became financially independent?
If you do not work but would like to, or want a career change, what would your dream job be?
If you do not work and have no wish to, or are retired or cannot work due to health reasons, how do you structure your days?
It was me who said about being a human being not a human doing.
I think theres a lot of pressure not only to work, but to do the "right" work, its often dependent on class and the social expectations that go with it, education plays its role in this too. How much education is encouraged or not, there's still a lot of people who discourage education and others who over value it, especially when they can't except that they're chid isn't that accademic.
I would love to go back to hairdressing, I love being in a salon, the smells of the chemicals, all the equipment and the feeling of making people happy, I mis the creative and artistic side of it too.
I would love to go back to university, I miss the discipline of study and the access to resourses that I just can't get anywhere else.
I do structure my days, with dog walking, shopping, cooking, reading, tv watching done at certain times and not others, I think it's important to dave structure when you're not working, as otherwise I find people sort of drift into aimlessness and depression.
I hate being asked 'what do you do?' Having been someone who's had a career tangent rather than a path, people don't know how t pigeon hole me, even when I worked in a shop it wasn't a "normal" shop, it was a wholefood co-operative and I'd spend my evenings explaining the business model of a co-operative or talking about peoples food issues. As a hairdresser I had people either tell me about who bad all hairdressers were or asking me questions and for advice. When I was a counsellor, people would tell me all sorts of things I didn't want to know. When I was working at a B&B abd Retreat house, running retreats and looking after those taking them, people would either give me a funny look and go away, or they'd start asking me questions of the sort they thought they could bully me over, they didn't because I didn't give them the answers they needed to do so. Some people were really interested, especially busy Mums who liked the idea of spending a week in silence, not having to listen to the constant chatter of small children and having the space to listen to one of their own thoughts from one end to another without interuption.
There is still a lot of prejudice and discrimination out there towards mental health and especially towards hidden disabilities like autism, where these are not regarded as “real” issues and where many people simply refuse to be educated and refuse to understand and work related issues are only just one area of this - some still believe that the only way to manage autism is by means of ultra strict discipline and excessive supervision, where they believe that we need to be “protected from ourselves” and “bullied out of” our condition “for our own good” - given reports that I’ve read since taking office it would appear that Labour want to drive through a much more judgemental and bullying attitude in our society towards disabled people that is far less compassionate then the Tories that is far less caring and far more combative, which in one way comes as no surprise as Labour has always been the nasty party, the more bullying party, which is why I never voted for them and never will, given my own experiences with Labour at local council level - Labour were never like this before the Blair years, when they took on Thatcherite policies
Can't help but agree with this. I feel in the case of autism, people just expect you to suck it up and get over it. This is a reason as to why people with autism or other underlying disabilities don't disclose or talk about it. You have too many people telling you to "get out of your comfort zone" or you are expected to put your needs aside and change to please others. In the case of work, the employer will simply fire you because you are a liability that is too costly.
And in our post-Covid world, as we advance towards the CCP style “social credit system” especially after Digital ID’s are made mandatory, I suspect that disabled people and people with autism will be far more likely to be unfairly penalises, including by the benefits system for expressing any views (at all) on any issue, political or otherwise, anywhere online, regardless of any other issue, as by then the right to online privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of expression will be totally “done away with” and the discrimination and prejudice against disabled people will massively increase, especially if aged over 40, despite the policies put in place to protect the rights of disabled people that “the powers that should not be” will not even bother to continue to implement let alone enforce, aside from themselves alone only paying lip-service to and attempting to pursue our rights in these cases will be totally shut down via the courts