When I was coming to the end of school, I wanted to go into journalism. Dunno why, it just appealed to me.

Then I applied for an apprenticeship at a local ship repair yard and got accepted as a welder/fabricator. Had no idea what that entailed, but they’d be paying me and I’d learn a skill. No idea how I went from definitely wanting to go into journalism to becoming a welder, but learning some twenty years later that I have ADHD probably goes a long way towards explaining it.

Anyhoo, hated almost every minute of my apprenticeship, got sacked a few months before the end, but managed to find a job doing similar work where I could finish my college exams. Then spent the next seven years working for that firm, where I hated the work, the managers and all my time there. But looking for work is hard, and I hated what I did anyway, so what was the point of working somewhere else?

Then, at 27 my wife left me, so I fucked off the welding and went to uni to study radio production. Graduated with a 2:1 (still undiagnosed at this point, so I’m still really proud of that) and used the degree to score a job on a cruise ship. Spent the next year traveling the world, spinning tunes in the nightclub every night, drinking too much rum and making the most of the all night buffet. It was great.

Did a year on there, but missed seeing my kid, so jacked it in, where I got a series of shitty, barely-paying jobs to try and pretend I was in any way a useful member of society, while I desperately tried to find work in the radio industry.

I never did manage that.

Worked at a company who made those birthday cards with the year of your birth CDs in for a couple of years. Loved that job. I got to fuck about on Photoshop with a bunch of good people, but the economy sucked and the company had to let me go.

So I gave up on my dreams and reluctantly went back on my tools.

Tried to be self-employed. Lasted a year before I had to admit defeat. Then had a couple of jobs in welding before landing at the company where I’ve been for the past five years.

I got my diagnosis a few years ago, which massively helped me to figure out who I am. Between that and turning 40, my brain settled down a bit and I was able to accept that I was doing a job that I didn’t particularly love, but that I had a skill for and that paid the bills.

18 months ago I was offered a promotion to the role of quality manager, which has subsequently morphed into mostly providing training to our employees who need it. To be honest, I don’t really care for the training side of things, but management leaves me alone, and I’m independently working on getting a health and safety management qualification which will enable me to move to a better paying job at a (hopefully) better company than this one.