I had lived to learn, to create, and to invent.
I had been a software designer for most of my life. It was what I had lived to do. For the longest time, being inside the code was the one place where I had actually felt really happy about being alive.
There is a reason for this: I grew up with major depression, with dysthymia, and with high functioning autism, within the context of an already highly dysfunctional family. Most of the people I know or have met do not have the time or the patience to deal with a person with my problems. But the only way I have survived so far was to make the effort to find the few people who did had both the time and the patience, people who I could look up to, learn from, and love.
I didn’t talk until I was six years old. My parents were ready to institutionalize me until I scored off the scale on non-verbal tests. I was then placed in a school for the learning disabled for my kindergarten and first grade, mainstreamed into second grade, then finished sixth grade and started high school at the age of twelve. I graduated high school at the age of fifteen, and started college shortly after my sixteenth birthday. I obtained degrees in both electrical engineering and computer science by the age of 23.
I had stumbled through much of my life as an extremely competent software and systems engineer and as a very shy, very depressed and very much bullied misfit otherwise. I won’t pretend I am much different now than I was then. But at least being devoted to my craft and to my hobbies and to my wife and daughter (such as amateur radio – I hold an Extra, electronics experimentation, pottery, poetry, and experimenting with a distributed computing architecture of my own design) I had been very content.
A lot of that changed in 2005 when I was laid off by a Fortune 500 aerospace company. I spent the next 3 years trying to find engineering work or even survival work, but found myself rejected at every attempt due to my age and due to my rather broken job history caused by socialization problems stemming from my depression and autism.
In March 2008 I though I finally found work for a consulting firm whose client sandbagged me once I disclosed my disabilities: the client had refused (citing IT department problems) to provide me with a password to obtain the tools I needed to do my job, and then fired me for not making performance targets after 4 and a half days from sitting idle. It was very plainly an act of discrimination but there was nothing legally I could do about it, because the contract I signed to allow me to work through the consulting firm shielded all clients for liability through ADA.
This incident after all those years away from software design had broken me. I felt I had no purpose after the layoff and it seems that no one would allow me to work for any reason, regardless of the skills and insight and lateral thinking that I could bring to the table. I have in the past helped prevent departments from closing down, I’ve helped others rejuvenate their product lines to remain saleable for several more years, and as my masterwork I even wrote a software documentation generator that saved my Fortune 500 firm more than a million dollars and seven years of engineering labor!
By then I was actually ready to suicide. My wife talked me out of it, however. She explained that even if all I did was stay home and keep house for her and my daughter for the rest of my life, she would still love me, that even though I was an engineer she did not love me only for my money. She made me promise that for as long as she and my daughter were still alive, that I still had to live. Even if I could no longer live for myself, she said, I could at least live for them.
So I decided to throw in the towel, careerwise, and file for SSDI that year. Since the rejection rate for mental illness was so high, I didn’t seriously expect anything, but then I was astonished to find it granted to me in August of 2008. I’ve used it since then to help my family get out of debt resulting from my years of being unemployed since my layoff.
So by day I am a homemaker, and for a couple hours per night, I play mad scientist. I follow various ideas, some of them involving training myself in how to use a tabletop Taig CNC milling machine and CAD/CAM software that I bought back in 2005 from my severance pay.
I wish I could find a job as a software designer again.
But failing that, I want to create beautiful things regardless, using my software engineering skills as a starting point.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
There is something really wrong going on with the “autism” label epidemic. The rate “appears” to be increasing but it is being heavily influenced by non professionals who assign the label to more and more children. A recent Government “survey” report ( conducted by phone to parents only) increased the rate to more than 1 in 100. This would include many (most) evaluations by non qualified non professionals.
The real situation is more complex. I am much older ( retired engineer) and can’t recall a concentration of problem children such as this condition describes.
Where are these kids coming from and where do they go? Elementary schools are full of them at the entry level – but they are pretty well missing from middle schools .
Some kids are slower developing than others and there are some medical conditions that cause real delays. In my current situation I have an almost 5 Grandson that has a language delay. In this case we do know what and why this happened. Fixing it is another thing after the cause was discovered correcting the problem is discouragingly slow. The child had a problem with clogged eustachian tubes (glue ear) in his early development. His pediatrician ignored the problem. His mother repeatedly tried to get a referral to a specialist to no avail. ( insurance gatekeeper action required) . In the old days before any antibiotics these children often got severe mastoiditis , and ended up deaf or at best learning disabled due to missing the early language development window. These kids were slow and seemed to remain that way . The concentration seemed less than 1 in 100.
After antibiotics most of this type problem has disappeared but it has not gone away.
My grandson was discovered at about 2 and by 3 was in therapy.
his progress is slow, he is intelligent, independent and has self assurance . This situation makes education difficult. He gets bored and does his own thing. This doesn’t sit well with educators.
He isn’t bad , mean, hyper , unfriendly but formal learning and communication is very difficult and frustrating.
he has been in early learning programs and is school full time.
He will not be ready for kindergarden next year.
He is going to have problems with better developed age peers.
I can see where he will have some of the same problems you did.
He has caring parents and has not been abused.
His two siblings are certified gifted and talented.
I can understand your problems.. please send your email address
if you want to discuss this more.
jesse
Hang in there, and welcome to the family of ‘those who make things’.
Go talk to the metal. You’ll discover it always listens. It frequently disagrees, and often has opinions of its own, but it’s always there to talk to, and when you’re done, you have a physical object as a record of your conversation. Besides, where else in life is ‘hit it harder’ a valid conversational gambit? If nothing else, it’s great stress relief. The metal doesn’t know who you are, or what your history was. It doesn’t care. All it knows is how much energy, how fast, from what vector, applied by what sort of tool. Speak that language, and it’ll sing back to you.
Cheers-
Brian
Sounds like you have had the strength and spirit to not let others define you. Takes a lot of guts with so much to deal with. I think being really smart, which you are, makes the pain of rejection more difficult. But you have found ways to express your creative self: your marriage, your child and the world of jewelry. Do labels say much? I have never trusted them.
Thanks for reminding me to savor the good stuff of life. Keep up the good work.
Each person has so much to offer. We have only to stop and listen to observe. Then we can see the true creative beauty each one of us. Hats off to YOU!
Thank you for sharing what you have experienced in your life.
It is a blessing you have a family that loves you for who you are, not what you are. You are a blessing to those that love you. You are an intelligent and creative person. It is not our challenges and problems that define who we are. I struggle with depression also and sometimes the only
solace I have is the ability to find ways to be creative and having gratitude for that.