decisions

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i think to assume any control or autonomy in one's life, one must take the corresponding responsibility. it is the only real way to assume that power. therefore, by my own logic, i am responsible for the train wreck that my life has become right now. is that melodramatic? perhaps, but i am feeling so irritated and dispirited that i cannot care about whether or not it is melodramatic.

first, i am responsible for agreeing to a supervisory position at my current job, which has limited my time to accomplish anything outside of work time and time again. or, i get things done, but not as well as i could if i had more time to think things over and process them properly.

secondly, i am responsible for agreeing to a three year lease with my folks which effectively made my rent as much as it would be for me to live alone, without any of the benefits of living alone. my ability to concentrate on creative projects and such is pretty much shot to hell.

thirdly, i am responsible for failing to choose career options that focus on ability rather than schmoozing and networking, which i really should know by this time in my life that i cannot hope to even tolerate the atmosphere... let alone actually thrive in it. places where opportunities are given to those who are liked, regardless of however mediocre their talent and work ethic may be. places where i sooner or later alienate everyone who is handing out opportunities.

i work 50 hours a week at a job that i hate, cannot do anything really fulfilling when i get home, and apply myself to career track at school that is more networking driven than anything i've ever done before in my life. what the hell am i doing? do other people do this? is it just me losing my mind? making decisions that are exactly 180 degrees in result from where i need my results to be?

You?re right. We have to take responsibility for our lives because it is only then that we can take the actions to make it better. There is a certain empowerment involved in it because if you say ?I got myself here? then by logical process you can get yourself back out.

1. It sounds like you?re trying again and again at something hoping for it to achieve an objective that you know deep down it can?t. In other words, purposefully, setting yourself up for failure. I'd suggest choosing a path you know you can actually succeed and want rather than the one everybody else goes down.
2. Yes I do the exact same thing. I don't know if there are any careers that focus solely on ability except for ones you make. I once thought science would do that so I wanted to be a scientist it was only later that I realized how massive of a social commitment that job is. I've made mistakes to throw my life away doing stuff that I couldn't care less about.
3. No I don't think you're loosing your mind. You only loose it if you give it away.. I just think that for some reason we make mistakes hopefully because we just didn?t know better because then we can go back and fix it. Don't forget what you're trying to achieve; what you really want for your life here. You can choose the right path, the one that won't go in the opposite direction.

I agree about taking responsibility for decisions. Are you looking for advice? Or viewpoints of others? I know I took a lot (A LOT) of skills tests to try to determine appropriate careers to pursue. And as I consider what feel like ultimately unsuitable paths I took for career directions, I had people giving me good advice but I turned it down because I was so detached from knowing who I was, what my abilities were, and where I would have the best chances for job satisfaction.

The decisions I made were all my choices, but I didn't know I was making them with an impaired ability to process those choices. It's like driving a car with the windows covered in aluminum foil or something - I felt like I was making good progress, but in reality, I had no idea where the gas I was burning was actually taking me, until I hit something, got out of the car and started asking questions like what was I thinking, driving this far without being able to see where I was going. But I didn't know I couldn't have a good understanding of where I was going, in a way that NT's seem to instinctively know.

If there were one low-cost source of assistance for alltistics, the one I think would have been most helpful to me is objective advice in making major life decisions, financial, career, etc. I realize that everyone needs to choose their own path, but somehow I think that one of the more insidious aspects of Asperger's is it's ability to make someone blind to options, and consequences of options, and which option/consequence combo is best given one's own personality, traits, tolerance for certain environments, etc. Having someone who understands the blind spots that can exist for those with autistic traits could have maybe allowed me to trace a better route.

Have you taken any skills or interest inventory tests? Sometimes employers make these available.

maybe i should rephrase. i think part of my problem is that i get the feeling that there isn't anything out there that doesn't hire more based on networking than how good at something you are. i'm more inclined to the arts, but that's so networking prone. nobody listens to your music or reads what you've written. you just get introduced to people or blahblah meet someone important somehow. i guess maybe i'm just unrealistic, just wanting something where i can just hand in my work or do my job and it doesn't matter if people like me or not. i want to work in translation, and so i thought i'd get into legal admin assistant work... to learn legal terminology cause that's an asset in the field of translation.. and.. i'm not really learning a whole lot so far except how to use word processing s**t which i basically already knew how to do.. and also to work in any offices, i'm finding out it's a lot more about if the office likes you rather than if you have typing skills or know your way around the software (which i have and i do). but basically they'll train people if they like them. which makes me question the whole point of the program i'm in but whatever.
i just get the feeling no matter what i do, it always ends up like this... i am quite far from personable and likeable, so... finding work is always 10 times harder than it should be even though there are things i am good at or could be good at if i had the opportunity. meanwhile people just show up, be charming, and don't really have to be good. don't have to work hard. don't have to hone skills. they do, but not the same way someone like me does. everything just ends up being who you know. i can't survive in a world like that.
i would just give up having a career.. do whatever i wanted as long as i could make a living, enough to eat and then have free time to do what i wanted.. but now i have obligations and can't really just uproot and do that. thousands of dollars of tuition debt. social obligations. can't walk away from the idea of having a career or making money. i have to make money to pay this money back. and to keep this lease going. and etc.

Ok. Well, at least you know what you want to do. So the thing you're looking for is a pathway and placement in a situation where social interactions have less of an impact on job performance assessment than the work you do. It's true that the job market prefers a certain personality type: http://lifehacker.com/the-personality-t ... 1558268968

That's just unavoidable. The job market will be influenced by the predominating culture of our society, and our society prefers the extroverted, smiley, boisterous, hard-charging personalities. If you're going to work in this society, that's the landscape. I even worked with one of those types of personalities who had to get out of the corporate world because he said it was just too cut-throat.

My own experience is that government positions have less leeway to marginalize those who just want to get their work done. It still happens that the charm factor plays into promotions, office environment, etc., but there are policies and guidelines in place that they have to abide by in terms of treatment of employees in hiring and assessments. Whereas in the private sector, it may be an owner or a CEO who determines the corporate environment where the bottom line may just be profits. One gov't position I held was in an office full of the non-sparkly type of personalities, but they were valued and honored for the contributions they made.

Where I was going with the test assessments is that if you have something on paper that shows your working style preferences, it can be something you can sit down with a supervisor or boss (if they're the type that are open to it, and you may not know whether they are until you bring it up) and discuss whether the supervisory position you've taken is the best fit for your skills. Even without that, you might find that your boss is more open to discussing available options than you think they might be. You say you "agreed" to a supervisory position. Did they offer it to you? If so, you might have some room to say it isn't working out for you, or to rearrange the responsibilities of the position to be more suitable for you. But obviously, I don't know your situation and it has to be approached in the right way. Maybe your boss is closed-minded about these things. Is there someone around you closer to your situation that you can discuss this with? Sometimes there are options around us we don't see that are really obvious to others.

I want the exact same job as you but I don't think they exist either. I just take what I can. You might be able to find a better country that's workforce doesn't rely on socialization so much. I know they're out there but they are pretty cutthroat. Countries without minimum wages for example I forget what country that was but it was extremely cutthroat. People were being paid pennies an hour because there was no minimum wage so they had to work really hard to make any kind of money which doesn't leave much time for socialization. It was an island country highly industrious but I forget what it was called. Even there though there will always be a degree of socialization when it comes to finding and keeping work. I think the best we can do is just limit the amount of socialization required for work by it's maximum amount. Your current career requires a lot more socialization than mine. I work in a factory.

Alternatively you could continue trying to adapt. After years I'm still failing at that but I have at least enough social capability to not get people to hate me. When my department did a 360 review I was the only one who didn't get any negative feedback and I'm the only one without any friends. Maybe everybody was just honest and put down 'no opinion' on their card. I know that I will never be able to compete socially with those around me. But all I need is a little bit to get by in the job. To not get people to hate me and to not get fired.

thanks for the advice about the government positions. that actually may be something to consider. especially hearing you put it that way, but i've had other people recommend that too. could be a viable option.

that being said, it could be a real possibility that this is just another time where i cut my losses and move on. take what little i've learned and move on to the next bad decision. heh. i also feel i've misled you guys a bit about my current job. although the program i'm in at school is very office oriented, i currently work in a gas station. so... dunno if that changes your perception of my position at all or what. but yeah i'm not exactly a success story at any rate. quit an english teaching job overseas to come back and change careers. but... who knows what will happen now.. anyway thanks for all your input and just for reading what i wrote.