Cabinet drafting or anything in the millwork industry. Store fixtures if you want something more rigid but in-depth

No problem is ever more complicated that "which part bumps into which and how" - or like, "where can this actually fit"

Document scanning!

Commercial pest control has been suiting me well. Repetitive enough that I always know what to do, different enough to keep me engaged and entertained. Pay is pretty good. There are definitely some shitty accounts that I service but there are enough easy or fulfilling ones to round that out.

Documentation management for me, especially end-user-facing KB type stuff. Mmmmm boy do I like making information accessible.

Sadly never really a stable standalone job, mostly just something I take on for fun wherever I work.

I thought I had cracked it. I'm an engineer (not software). The job requires all of this, but the timescales are all wrong, so you'll be designing something for six weeks, then drafting documents for the next eight. So I spend the first week in joyous flow and then the next 5 in hell. There is no job that's right for me. I'm really useful I swear, I promise.

I found out by luck, and I've been much happier ever since.

Was this posted on May 10, or October 5?

May 10th.

Okay but wheres the stimulating part? Finding solutions to complicated questions on the first draft, ideally

Man, I had a sweet spot job before i moved. I was effectively a gofer, just doing whatever the management wanted me to do. They understood the limits of my abilities and drip fed me with responsibilities and raises. I worked at my own pace and usually alone. Some times i was at my desk for hours doing paper work or researching. Other times i was running around all over the place to pick up supplies, or rescue coworkers with supply drops, or help with a broken vehicle, or just help ith the work on site.

It seemed like there was always something new to tackle, but everything felt doable. And also i got to listen to podcasts/music pretty much whenever i wanted.

There's no way to prove that

Firefighter.

For me, that has been dispatch for a towing company.

You might also be experiencing burnout, because some of what you describe sounds very familiar to me. Devon Price has written a lot on the topic.

If you are indeed burnt out, then that's a tricky situation, because I'd argue that burnout is rarely the fault of the person experiencing it, but a consequence of far too many demands being placed on us for an extended period. For me, the root of my burnout was trauma and an extended period of housing instability — stuff that was fundamentally unfair.

Living under late stage capitalism is making an increasing number of people struggle with burnout, and few of us are afforded the privilege of being able to take sufficient time to rest and recover from it. So even knowing that one is burnt out doesn't necessarily help too much. Despite this, I find it helpful to be able to understand that a significant portion of my struggles originates external to me, and that whilst I feel like I am the one who is broken, I am actually experiencing a reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances. Even if it doesn't change much, I think it's better to be angry at the right things.

Hence programming being popular with AuDhd folks

The first draft is mostly interpreting the architects'/customer's drawings to make the outside look like what they want and then the second draft (or third, usually)

In the commercial side of things you're often working on reception desks and wall panel features (moss/water walls, logos on slats, etc.). In residential you run into lots of weird hardware and difficult cabinet arrangements for customers, and tieing in with existing stuff in a house which is always a pain.

In total, it's a lot of managing figuring out the best way to do something out of the 6 available, or tackling some weird aspect or material you haven't used before. I find it similar to minecraft redstone or legos in feel for how it is to do millwork engineering

It is burnout (too). I've been experiencing a lot of instability which got worse in the past few years. Trauma as well.

One or two things that could have gone okay and make most things bearable, if not fixable, took terrible turns and kinda broke me mentally.

I blame only myself though, ultimately, because a little foresight and mental strength could have spared me a lot of trouble.

I work as a camera operator (among other AV/broadcast related things), and find that shooting sports satisfies the ADHD nicely. 15 periods of hockey flies by - it’s the breaks where I realize I’m tied by period 9.

That is true.

"I blame only myself though, ultimately, because a little foresight and mental strength could have spared me a lot of trouble."

My gut instinct here is to say that it sounds like you're holding yourself to too high a standard. Perhaps there were things you could have done differently, but were they really things that you could have reasonably foreseen and enacted while you were in the moment?

I know that for me, better paths that I can see now through hindsight were often ones that were either invisible to me at the time, or things I had considered, but felt utterly incapable of actually enacting; there were many better paths available to me that I would've only been able to go down if I had been at "full health", so to speak. And so looking back, all I can do is lament the circumstances that led me to be in a situation where the strength and wisdom required of me was more than I could muster in my exhausted state.

It's a common instinct of those who have experienced trauma — to look back on what we experienced and agonise over what we could have done differently. I think the reason for this is that for as varied as trauma and its causes are, at the heart of most of it is a loss of control or personal agency. That's the factor that seems to elevate distress into capital T Trauma.

It can be reassuring, in an odd way, to blame oneself for the events that caused the trauma, because it allows us to construct a narrative in which we had more control than we actually did in that situation, which can create a sense of safety in the aftermath. But unfortunately, not everything is a scenario that can be learned from and prevented in future — sometimes awful things happen that we couldn't have reasonably prevented or handled much better than we did. Sometimes simply surviving the ordeal is an impressive achievement, which sucks to have to admit. Certainly, the thought makes me feel quite vulnerable.

However, the sense of safety that one gets from blaming oneself for past events is a fragile kind of safety that can impede long term healing. You'll never be the same person you were before the events that led you to this point, but it is possible to heal enough to build new futures — whilst also grieving all the possible futures you lost. I also want to emphasise here that whilst I might sound like I have my shit together in this respect, it's an ongoing journey for me too, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that recovery is a slow and non-linear process. A lot of the wisdom in this comment is stuff that I spend a lot of time trying to properly internalise and incorporate into my own life.

Though I do concede that, given that I know nothing of the events that caused you so much so strife, it's entirely possible that there are things you could've reasonably done at the time, even without the benefit of hindsight. Even so, I don't think it's useful to actively blame yourself for what happened. What has happened has already happened, and you're already suffering for it through the consequences of that period. Beating yourself up about it is effectively like giving yourself double the punishment than you would rightfully "deserve" (and "deserve" is in quotes because I still think it's likely that you're not nearly to blame as you think you are). And looking at this pragmatically, if "the beatings will continue to morale improves" was going to help you get your shit together, it probably would have worked by now.

Whether it was past you to blame, or circumstances beyond your control, effectively, the situation you're now in is that your capacity checking account is running low, and you have a huge backlog of "bills" to pay. It is possible to come back from that kind of situation, but you'll never be able to get back the time or resources that were lost to this extended ordeal. That sucks, and it's unfair, but to ruminate on things you could've done differently is just throwing more time onto the pyre.

If therapy is something that's potentially accessible for you, then I'd strongly recommend it, as healing is much easier with professional help. If that isn't an option for you (and I know it isn't for many — it certainly isn't for me), then at the very least try to forgive yourself for what happened. You can't change what's in the past, but you do deserve a future that's better than your present. Even if you were 100% to blame for what happened, I would still believe this to be true.

Biomed might be a bit more ADHD for some, but it hits all the tropes.

I don't know what I'm going to repair day to day, I'll get all sorts of weird stuff. And sometimes get interrupted which irritates me when I'm in the middle of a big project.

But my time clock is regular daily. I go in, I triage what I can repair vs send out, what is needed immediately vs being put on the "When I get slow period" and figure out how to put in PMs. And what that really looks like is if there's no emergency repairs, I ask my self what am I feeling that day. Do I want boring and repetitive? Lets go PM some machines. Do I want a bit of thinking, lets repair something I've repaired dozens to hundreds of, the troubleshooting is the thinking time. Do I want something novel, time to dig up some manuals and find something I've never worked on before.

I've been going to therapy. I think I'm about to stop though. It's not really doing much good because I'm too stuck in my head. I don't like the options I seem to have in life.

I think I'm close to submitting to an "it's too late to do anything meaningful" conclusion.

Therapy helped me put things in a more logical perspective, but it's not going to help with some "fundamental" things that are necessary to fix things even within logic, let alone what I now know that I ideally want.

I can't express how much I appreciate you taking the time to write that.

Been designing orthopedic medical devices for 15 years. This is accurate in my experience as well, but I very intentionally seek out roles that have varied opportunities.

I we the same person? I am literally doing the same thing.

yea, my physical injuries sucked, but that was peanuts compared to my mental health. When they were about to move me from the engineroom, the paramedics injected me with gods combo of Fentanyl and Ketamine for the pain, but that gave me a psychosis that I’m still dealing with today.

It's why I'm working in house. I could have worked for a manufacturer but then I would have only worked on two machines and probably have lost my mind by now.

Whaaa? No way?! Though I do think there’s something related with boat people and maps/geography. I know at least three people in the industry with geography degrees. I’m loving it, every day I’m excited to learn new things and make beautiful maps. It’s a welcome change to waking up dreading the day. Though that had more to do with my work management than the actual work.

Yeah that will fuck you up for sure. Godspeed on steady progress to more stable mental health.

And kitchen work.

Lots of routines, rules and systems. But you'll never do the same day twice.

Plus everyone else loves drugs as much as you do.

I mean... autistic people would just want the structure and adhd people would (mainly) just want the variety.

So that's two groups in opposition.

It's not just this, it's practically every post on non-NT-based subs.

"That ADHD feeling when you walk into a room and forgot why you were there"

"Feeling awkward at the party because you have Hard Mode Brain"

"ADHD making me hate my job amiright"

It's just all normal shit that almost every single person relates to but attributed to ADHD for no fucking reason at all. And the thing is, everyone seems to enjoy it. Like people here found a community centered on taking their extremely neurotypical behaviors and attributing it to a disorder they identify with. And for the most part it's harmless. So, idk, good for them, I guess. I just find it deeply annoying hence -> I think these communities just aren't for me.

Welcome to IT or DevOps

That sounds great

Yeah fair. It's also the case that a lot of ND behaviours are experienced by neurotypical people.

What is less easily understood is how often ND people experience them (i.e. constantly). And why that's different.