Yep, I can get stuck by life too...

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I'm not really sure why I'm posting this but here it goes.

I may have mentioned that I have a new job, its an auditing job and a pretty lucrative one at that. Unfortunately I'm really starting to get that impression that what I'm trying to do if I take on all the responsibilities is a good ways past what my nervous system can really rise to. Part of my problem is I'm a great book learner, whether its the fact that classroom learning is all theory or the fact that you just need to retain and regurgitate information I tend to do real well at it. However when I'm in a work environment, when its mandatory that you figure things out from the ground up and are able to see a lot deeper into things with your deductive reasoning I tend to hit snags. No, its not that I can't do it, the problem is a lack of endurance. By the time I sit down, hit a few major hurdles, and I start feeling like everything's starting to sink I find myself becoming overwhelmed. Being overwhelmed however isn't an appropriate answer, if anything its a sign that if you can't hack it you really don't belong. Try as I may I'm starting to really wonder if I'll be able to get myself up to the caliber of actually conducting audits on my own, talking to the client about everything I need to (when I'm under strain I have a real hard time talking to much of anyone), and then I have to juggle actually calling in all the claims from the vendors which I'm dealing with which gets to be hectic once your about 2 or 3 audits deep and are dealing with that much data from that many places.

I know its mandatory that I keep my wits together, come off as confident, and keep myself focused on my objectives but at the same time I feel terrible when a company is investing so much money in me and I'm not returning it. I REALLY don't want to go back to the restaurant industry if this doesn't work out but what I'm faced with I have to understand that there are no easy jobs for people who can't juggle complex information in their heads all day, the mind-numbing jobs of the profession are now all about speed and accuracy (well beyond what I can handle), so I might be stuck at a Suma Cum Laude flunky working somewhere mopping floors, prepping food at a restaurant, etc. What kills me about this is of course I'm not aspie, I'm PDD-NOS, which kinda means by all the world's definition I'm NT (still have AS and what goes with it but not allowed to have that sort of identity by my peers or relatives) just because I do such a good job of covering it when I have to and my whole support network doesn't and won't take into account that I could have a neurological impass when it comes to executive functioning. I swear, I'm not a quitter, I'm not lazy, I'm not a loser, and its really burned me up that I've got something like a welded-on storm drain keeping my head below water. I am at least getting the point in my life where for all the wringing, worst social nightmares I've had come true, and things that I couldn't have even imagined coming to fruition in some horrifying ways its almost like I've emotionally gotten a little nehilistic about it all and its tough for me to really keep myself driven at something and keeping myself struggling like a fish out of water when I realize all it does is get me to the same end and just in much worse emotional shape when I get there.

I know you guys probably aren't going to have any suggestions, right now I really have no idea what I'd really hack it at in the professional world aside from what school was supposed to prep me for, and I know that I'm talking to a crowd who's gotta think I comparatively have it pretty damn easy. Still, sometimes I have to get my thoughts out one way or another and I really don't feel like bugging my friends with this and especially not my parents - they've went through my hard times in tandem with me one too many times for my liking and being I'm 27 it really doesn't feel appropriate anymore to go to em like that (especially when there's nothing they can tell me, nothing they or BVR can do, and again - that's just riling them up in ways that they don't need to be). I don't know where our world is headed when in the U.S. you can't make a living wage unless you not only have a degree but can use it, especially as I see the threshold for 'making it' getting pushed higher and higher out of even a great many NT's reaches, forget the free world trade aspect in that because it was around the bend a long time ago. I think the real struggle will be finding some way to redirect myself, find away to actually accept what's happening. As for me going out as a flunky, I can't even comprehend it, its just too arbitrary to my bottom line nature or the cocky SOB I have living in my head.

Well I know that the demands of my job are completely different from yours so I don't know how applicable my thoughts are, but the main thing that's coming to mind is for you to give it time - a lot of time. As long as you're keeping your head above water, stick it out. (I've probably said all this before, sorry if it's old news...) As with all things, the longer you do it, it should get easier. But it does take a long time for us to stop acting like new employees and be as independent and do as well as our coworkers. When I start a new job (even when it's similar or the same job, just with some variables changing so it's not the same routine etc), it takes me a long time to settle in and really feel like I'm doing well at it and that I belong there - way longer than other employees. In a case where it's a whole new job it literally takes years. During those first few years I do well enough to keep the job/keep my head above water, but that's about it. And like you said, my biggest problems seem to be applying the knowledge in my head to new situations, and executive functioning. My coworkers probably think I'm the most useless person ever hired, but in time I've always been able to prove myself and some of the people who dislike me the most at first end up being my biggest fans. And I've seen the exact same thing happen with a few other aspie-ish coworkers. I have one new coworker now (she's been around for maybe 6 months) who's almost the spitting image of what I was like when I was new. I hate to say it but she even frustrates me sometimes, just because I'm used to working with NTs/"normal" people who catch on to things faster and can figure things out on their own better. But I know exactly where she's coming from and I'm sure she'll be fine, it'll just take time.

Right right, I've never really had any intent of not hanging in - if they wanted to unload me that would be their prerogative. From what I heard from the boss today though I think the expectations I was catching at training were a bit farther down the road than I thought and he's still saying that he'd give it until maybe July or August before we really get good with what we're doing (in that case I can definitely breath a sigh of relief). As for the peer-to-peer social aspect thats totally fine, its again feeling that need like I have to be holding myself out as a polished professional who's been doing it for years (something a lot of NT's have a knack for fulfilling rather well at least in form, even if not in substance and its always seemed like the form is extremely important just because of how our culture works).

That sounds like good news about the expectations.

In my post I didn't mean to imply that I thought you were giving up already. My point was just that it can take us a lot longer to settle into a job than it might for an 'average' employee. So IF, down the road, you get to a point where you really feel like the job's not working out, just make sure you've given yourself enough time instead of judging things by standards that might not really apply in your case.

Here's something else I thought of today and I don't know, I'm thinking your job's probably already set up like this to some extent - if I'm doing something that requires gathering/organizing/compiling information, the only way I can pull it off is to be meticulously organized, to the point of being over-organized. (The situation rarely presents itself in my job but I use the strategy a lot at home.) Everything's written down, lists and more lists, that sort of thing. That way I have a clear idea (in a visual format) of what I've already done, what I still need to do, and a step-by-step plan of how I'm gonna do it. The result is that less thinking is required in real-time as the process progresses, less reliance on executive functioning and memory, feeling less overwhelmed... leading to more energy for the tasks in general, especially ones like talking to people or deductive reasoning/knowledge application. One recent situation I'm thinking of in particular for example involved a binder with basically a master "to do" list and sections for the different things I needed to take care of. One of the first steps was to get info from a bunch of people (by phone) - for that part I had a separate page for each person with their name and contact number, then a list of the things I needed to tell or ask them with space under the questions for me to write the answers. After each person was done their page got moved to the next section of the binder to begin the process of compiling the info... and on it went (tedious, lots of lists etc). Extremely organized, consciously broken down into steps or tasks... the types of strategies you read about with regards to executive function. It probably sounds pretty tedious and time-consuming, but for me the executive function and energy snags consume even more time so I'm better off taking the time to write everything down this way. (I'm not sure how well I've communicated the idea, hopefully you might gain something useful from it.)

Yeah, the nice thing with my job is that in our use of a lot of our programs we have a lot of that sort of thing built into the process, ie. when we file a finding we constantly upkeep it with notes and addendums as to how things are going. I don't think time management on-site though is as easy just because even though you can do absolutely everything in your power to organize yourself and organize the data you can have a lot of rather unexpected hurdles shot at you and in a way that all that pre-planning and premeditation gets shot right out the window, in that case the only real way I'll figure out my way around it is having enough experience to know what to expect and how to hedge myself around in the way I plan my work. The thing I notice right now that still does suck, comparative to even other new people I'm not making any money - looks rather like sheer luck on the account that the big money stuff they're finding is stuff they had to work about as hard for as what I did for my small items, its at least good to know that my methods aren't crap but my luck really needs to change in that regard though because I could still have a lot of explaining to do I'd imagine if it doesn't.