When mainstream employment is inaccessible, and the usual advice isn’t working, sometimes a passion project can lead to unexpected opportunities.
Earlier this year, I had completely given up on finding work. Recently, however, my outlook and fortune has changed significantly. Things aren’t perfect, but they don’t need to be. The completion of a goal is not the only form of success. Progress is also a form of victory.
Here’s what happened:
I’ve never done particularly well in any job I’ve had, for one very simple reason – I’m too damn slow.
I live with a dissociative disorder, which causes me to be in a constant state of mental withdrawal. Just staying conscious is difficult, but doing any kind of work is borderline impossible, since the dissociation slows me down so much.
I think slow. I learn slow. I act slow. Not all the time, but often enough for it to be a problem. It’s not that I’m incompetent, I can perform plenty of jobs to a great standard, but I can never do them at the speed required of me.
It’s the same at every job. In a warehouse, I’ll pack the orders too slow. At an office, I’ll miss the deadline for a report.
Some things aren’t affected by my “slowness”, however. I once had a call centre job, and I dealt with customers excellently, because my speech and interpersonal skills aren’t affected by my condition. Unfortunately, detail-heavy tasks like admin work are affected by it, and that was the other half of my job.
This pattern has followed me into virtually every job I’ve ever had. One half of my job would be easy to manage, unaffected by my condition. The other half was completely impossible. As you can imagine, only doing half of my job properly didn’t mesh so well with any of my employers, so none of my jobs lasted very long.
After a while, I started giving up. It became obvious that I was never going to get a job that my symptoms were completely compatible with.
I pondered how other disabled people must deal with this stuff. Don’t heaps of disabled folks have jobs? What’s stopping me from doing it? I started seeking advice from the community, speaking to disabled peers, sifting through blogs and whatnot.
While many people in the community shared my frustrations, it seemed that most of them had managed to find their niche one way or another. And even for those didn’t, our circumstances were too different to compare. The lessons and strategies they’d developed simply weren’t applicable to me and my particular condition. I found plenty of support and love in the community, but no answers.
Once again, I was on my own. No guidebook. No mentor. No way out.
At this point, I just completely gave up. I knew I wasn’t getting back into work, so I just slumped into my hobbies as a distraction. I didn’t realise it at the time, but this depressing phase of drowning myself in hobbies was actually what would turn my whole situation around.
I stagnated for years because I couldn’t find a guide or a mentor to solve everything for me. But in the end, I did it myself.
One of my hobbies was photography, and I made a habit of carrying my camera everywhere, so I had something to occupy myself with. I began to notice something interesting – my dissociation wasn’t getting in the way of this. Even on a day when my symptoms were quite severe, I didn’t struggle too much with the camera in my hands.
Huh.
At first, this didn’t seem noteworthy. Photography is difficult to make money from, and my skills weren’t good enough to justify a paycheque.
But, to my surprise, some of my photos earned praise. It was clear from feedback that my work was not universally good – some of it was good, some of it was bad, I’m a rookie after all – but people were noticing potential, even if it was still unrefined.
I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much, but I kept at it, kept practicing, seeking feedback, trying to polish this one damn skill that wasn’t affected by my condition.
I got two requests for photoshoots from people who had seen my pictures. One of them a paid job. I was floored. After months of simply toying around, my side hobby had become a source of income. For the first time in years, I began to wonder if maybe I’d found my niche after all.
It didn’t stop there. I had some basic training in filmmaking, so I began to practice with that too. After all, the two skills are related, so I reasoned that I might replicate my luck with video.
Like with photography, I began to improve quickly since my dissociation didn’t get in the way, and I ended up getting requests to film videos for a few small businesses.
I couldn’t believe it. I found something I could do, and I was getting money for it. Small money, and nothing ongoing, but I’ve found something that my condition doesn’t stop me from getting better at, and all I need to do now is keep improving.
My disability still has some impact on this. While the actual shooting isn’t affected much by my condition, it makes editing almost impossible. I’ve missed a few deadlines (and therefore paycheques) because of this.
But that’s okay, too. My doctor tells me that we’re making progress with my recovery. While my condition can’t really be “cured”, there’s ways to reduce how often and how severely my symptoms affect me.
I’m not there yet – but I’m no longer completely lost either. My journey isn’t finished, but for the first time in years I’m making new leaps forward.
I stagnated for years because I couldn’t find a guide or a mentor to solve everything for me. But in the end, I did it myself.
The path I’m on was discovered purely by accident, so I won’t take credit for that – but I pride myself on continuing to walk it. I’m not finished. My future career isn’t fully secured. But I’m getting close.
And if you feel lost in the same way I did, I’m almost certain that you can do the same. If I’ve learned one thing from this, it’s that everyone has far more value, skills and strengths than they realise. Sometimes it just takes a little chaos and experimentation to reveal it.
This blog was written as part of CYDA’s DREAM Employment Network. You can find out more about the Network here.
About the author:
This blog has been published anonymously.
