Yes.
My autism hyperfixation is history (not just dates, but also culture, theologie, architectural developement and more to fully understand it). I wanted to become a teacher with that. One that completely changes how history is being taught. Inspired by one teacher that i found did it really well.
Buuut due to standardised tests i couldnt get the grades to get me to academic level so i did the rational thing, knowing the paper exams only get harder, i went into a job and love that too. Threw that job i got the love of my life and another dream: game developer studio. Born out of spite and hate for paradox interactive. Their monetisation and their Spagetti code.
I also have another dream that im also actively persuing
Yes. I studied and have a degree in animation. I wanted to work in animation, specifically as a story board and background artist. However, I’m talentless. I attempted graphic design work, but my first gig was with Lisa Frank, and that didn’t go well. I searched for more design work and I could only find work in customer service. After a year of portfolio work, applications, etc., I had to accept I just don’t have talent and I wasted my money. My goal was to avoid my current job because all I heard growing up was how awful it was. I studied hard, graduated with honors and everything. Still a talentless dumbass who now works in insurance. I will likely stay in this career (insurance) until I die.
Keep your eyes open for opportunities. Sure, you work in insurance, but surely they need ads and signs and such, maybe you can independently put forth a few products in the environment you work in and make a name for yourself serving the needs you find where you find them.
I work in IT now, but I used to be a musician. Some of my music has been used in training videos for companies I’ve worked for, evne though I didn’t get any credit I got paid my normal wages to make music. I learned image editing and creation in gimp and some of my images have been used in multi-million dollar court cases.
Being a jack of all trades is typically looked down on by snooty people who don’t know that the full saying is, “Jack of All Trades, Master of None, Oftentimes better than a Master of One”.
Yeah, it seems not many people know the last bit. I say it everytime after a slight pause “… oftentimes better than master of one.” And then watch the little look of confusion. Some people will stop and think about it, and comment something like, I guess that’s true, but not as often.
Never thought of that. I’m usually like, “Well, why bother, I didn’t make it.” But I could try and do some things here and there. Thank you.
I wanted to be a pilot.
By age 16 I had several hours towards my private license.
My junior year in High School I started looking universities with aviation degrees, or engineering. I had settled on Rose Hulman and one other (been 40 years so don’t remember the place, but it was one of the top aviation colleges in the US at the time.) I actually was accepted at “the other place”.
It all came crashing down in the last conversation I had with my enrollment counselor and he asked a question that hadn’t been asked of me in the prior many conversations I had with him.
“How is your eyesight?”
You see, I’m legally blind in my right eye and in the US, pilots are required to have 20/20 corrected eyesight. In order for my right eye to be 20/20 I would basically have to have a telescope hanging off my face.
I never did get my private pilots license, which I can get even with my eyesight, but I would never pass medical for a commercial ticket.
Yes, I did look at training in other countries and yes there are a few that only require perfect color vision, which I do have. The problem was my parents absolutely forbade me to travel to another country.
So that was that.
I was on broadcast crews for sports events. I started out doing camera then worked my way up to graphics. As cool and fun as that job was there’s major caveats to it. You need multiple jobs in this field to make any money. You can’t just coast at one place and expect to make bank. You have to hustle back and forth between gig after gig. This was just for college. Pros are even worse. I knew people getting gigs with my favorite pro teams and they’d say stuff like " we only got 2 dates this month" and that’s with avails given upto 6 months in advance. I was told for one arena that the group there is very clicky and the only way to get into it is to wait for someone to die. I know guys who would spend a weekend in Philly just to book it up to New York for a few days then fly down to Florida for the next weekend. It’s a real hustle, with potentially no down time, and crap pay. It’s an amazing gig of you’re fresh out of college and have the energy for it. Unfortunately life put a couple road blocks in my way and I had to give it up for my own sanity.
A friend was running electrical for studio shoots on the news. He couldn’t take a go of it either, as gaffing is grunt work no one respects unless and until the dalai lama is visiting and trips over a power lead.
Kinda. I wanted to go into game dev, didn’t really exist as an industry in my country at the time. Had some artistic talent, had it stifled by my parents.
Ended up going into IT, those jobs have dried up in the last few years. Now I have three fields I’m good at but flairly unable to pursue.
Honestly I feel a bit beaten down over it.
Burned out being a sysadmin, took a lower position, ended up with less responsibility and more pay. :)
Did I HAVE to? No. Did I? Yes.
Yes, I’ve given up anything resembling a dream career in any field. I’m too autistic for careers, and I’ve accepted that I will only ever have a “job.”
Being an unarmed security guard isn’t so bad.
I wouldn’t say it was my dream career, but I recently quit my job with the federal government that I’ve had for 10+ years because I refuse to be on the wrong side of history. I’m currently unemployed and not sure where I’ll go from here, but it’s better than working for TACO Don.
it sucks that this is the fate you ended with, but, you made the correct decision 100%.
I worked at probably the best luthiery in North America. Got let go because I couldn’t keep up. I have tremors which makes fine dextrous work very difficult. At the time I was also going through a brutal break-up too.
Really bad time for me. Also working at this place was like playing a couple good games of beer league hockey and immediately getting drafted into an NHL team. I feel like if I took another shot at it, it would go much better second time around. But it just wasn’t meant to be at the time. No matter what, it was always going to be a massive uphill climb, but I was super dedicated to doing it and doing it well. It’s unfortunate it came to such an abrupt end, but I understand why it had to happen.
I used to think I was going to be an astronaut, but then I needed glasses and so that was out. Then I wanted to make robots but I went to a robotics company for a high school project and they explained engineers don’t build anything and the technicians don’t design anything. That’s no fun.
So now I’m in business software. I do enjoy coding a lot and it could be a dream job but honestly, I work with and for a lot… bad companies, bad designers, and bad managers. And again if I want to do their jobs, I don’t get to do the technical stuff I want to do. I’m pursuing other team lead positions but I’ve done that before and it’s just a bit better.
I just want to build good software and no one else really gives a shit to improve their trade. I shouldn’t be telling UX specialists their design sucks for users. I shouldn’t be telling service engineers how to design APIs. I shouldn’t be telling corporate architects their default package layout is bad and non-standard making it difficult for engineers to navigate until they get familiar.
I wouldn’t mind training all this stuff, but that would cut my pay in half, and I need all that money for quality of life outside of work.
Pretty sure I’m just going to be cranky until I retire even though I enjoy what I do.
Kind of. I used to have a career in a very exciting and complex field, but corporate America turned it into a job. On the whole, I’m ok with it as my personal priorities shifted toward family.
Wanted to be in the US Air Force. Had no intention of being there for the short term, wanted to stay for a very long career. Screwed up my knees during basic. Was told my dream of serving was gone.
as in cant even get the foot in the door, i was very disappointed with that, so i gave it up ive been on other platforms where people also gave up because it was just to hard to get into many stem/research jobs, especially if you cant go to grad school right away, without going post-bacc or resetting your career track. and found it was designed, and gatekeeped by the industry as a whole. Also job sites made it harder.
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