On the eve of starting (another) new course, and a(nother) new direction for income generation
Notes from my CV and notes on ADHD (possibly) brains – on getting bored, on frustration, imposter syndrome, and multiple “career” changes. And acceptance that this is the way for some people.
The tl;dr of it is that I am on the cusp of parking/shelving/”docking” (if I’m to row out the boating analogies) my coaching business – still open for anyone who wants it, so I’m not changing the name of this ‘stack, nor am I taking links down to the coaching business website. Instead I actively looking to start a new course of action to create an income in Web Design/Development (via self-employment because reasons)
A handful of months ago, I applied to start a fully funded year-long course on (front end) web development (so it includes the design aspects of HTML, CSS and Javascript) which I have since been given a place on, thankfully. I do love learning so I am very much looking forward to having a set of structured lessons and deadlines to adhere to – I could learn it all for free also as there are plenty of resources to do so, but I haven’t because self-imposing deadlines just doesn’t work.
I have had an interest in web design on and off for years but thanks to Vimh (the voice in my head) haven’t pursued it much. Well, I briefly, quietly tried years ago and then quickly got tired of it at the time – mostly due to overwhelm of wondering where to start learning how to do it with my inner-tendency towards perfectionism and imposter syndrome. I have at least been able to leash in the perfectionism tendencies… I have actually had at least a passing interest in various forms of design since my teenage years. More on this later.
I have ended up making this piece far too long and have birthed a separate article on my lived experience of being in the coaching industry for anyone who is either already trying to make a living from it, or who is considering entering the waters.
(Honestly, I don’t know why I’m doing water and boating puns other than the idea of plotting a new course brought that photo of a boat on azure waters off the coast of Oahu to mind. Sorry. I’ll stop it.)
ADHD and “career” choices
I’m entering my 6th decade on the planet (ie I’m in my early 50s) and I often joke about not knowing what I want to do when I grow up. I’m one of those people who feels like I’m still in my 20s, still trying to make sense of the world and of people, and my self, and wondering what I can stick with for longer than five minutes, or 5 years and wondering where the last 30 years went, and also what to do with the remaining time on the planet. Due to current health concerns, I matter of factly express that I will be surprised if I make it to “national retirement age” – I actually feel I have had a great life despite the obvious satirical and cynical way in which I express myself most of the time, so living much past 70 isn’t a huge drive for me. More of a drive is to be comfortable in the next 20 years.
I use the term “career” with air quote marks because I simply can’t imagine having a career where my sense of the word is doing one sort of job for 20+ years – like being a doctor, or an engineer or an accountant or a farmer. I mean… HOW do people do this?? How do you not get bored? And even if you do, how do you push through that endlessly for years?? Live to work or work to live or a bit or both?
Personally, I just can’t (now) do work as a means to an ends. Unfortunately – I have to believe in its value, worth, and find enjoyment in the process of the work.
I now understand this inability to maintain a career for many many years may be a trait of having ADHD…. The mind is endlessly entertained by an endless amount of interesting things in the world and in one’s imagination – there simply isn’t enough time and energy to explore even a fraction of it all. What to pick to focus on? Where to start? What happens if I don’t like it after learning how do it and spending a lot of money on courses etc? Won’t that be a waste of time? What happens if I’m crap at it? Endless anxiety-driven questions. Add in that everything seems like it would be interesting to do…. Well, apart from book keeping. And I’m not great with blood.
So here I am after a series of attempts to get into something profitable, and aligned with my values, and emotionally rewarding to get that illusive sense of achievement…. Still trying to work out what works… Especially for longer than 5 minutes years. So my CV is rather chaotic and thus doesn’t appeal to most employers it seems. Plus, I do have a seemingly annoying habit to ask too many questions like, “Why are we doing this this way?”, which doesn’t go down well with leadership usually… I have had a series of people go out on a limb for me and I’ve ended up disappointing them in all of this too.
For me, self-employment really is the only way to live/work/live. But there are challenges in getting things done, especially in a consistent manner. Add in I’m actually quite an introvert and hate being “on stage” in the limelight, so social media content creation has always been a struggle… Outsourcing is an option if one has the money to do so, but to get the money to do so, one has to be financially successful enough to afford that option, which requires some consistency…. Chickens and eggs….
In the early days of my working life, I actually lasted 10ish years working technical IT roles, 9 of which were in the NHS in the UK. I didn’t have one role for the full 9 years, though – there were plenty of restructurings and reorganisations, mergings etc within the structure of the NHS Trusts and I managed to develop from 1st Line Tech support lifting and shifting PCs, changing passwords and installing MS Office 95 by 25 (!) 3.5” floppy discs one at a time per PC (that was intensely boring, so I started talking to staff, asking questions…) until the end of the 9yrs where I was one of 2-3 guys doing network admin for the entire NHS Trust, and then I got fed up of being treated like a delinquent idiot by leadership and of being very subtly bullied by middle management every day for years on end at the time. As I left I warned my colleagues, I wasn’t believed and years later at least one of the same colleagues signed off with stress being managed by the same middle manager. The NHS was (is?) a job for life, although it often seemed “slightly” corrupt – the only way to get a job was to know someone, or wait for someone else to leave (no-one did), retire or die. I never knew of anyone being fired no-matter how atrocious or bad they were. I actually got the network admin position because one of the previous guys fell off a mountain in The Lake District (where we worked) and died. Sad, but true. Job openings were often tick box advertised internally and then externally as decreed as being proper and ethical, but the job requirements were basically curated so as to only able to be filled by those already in the team. Yes, that applied to me on at least one occasion too.
I hadn’t really received much of a pay rise in those 9 years despite the better job titles and having more responsibility – it was almost always hovering around the GBP 21k pa even as I rose to Network Administrator. At least the pension was good deal at the time.
One day, I had a very rare moment of vertigo* and the Head of IT asked, after 9 years of me working there, me trying to do the best job I could, “Are you drunk?” (Yes, I drove 40 miles one way completely shit faced and couldn’t walk in a straight line never mind drive between the lines, of course….) (That’s angry sarcasm, to be clear). The final straw as they say…. I quit the next day or two, I think. Certainly soon after. I remember him clearly saying “Is it the money? We can sort that out if so.” The money would have been good years prior, but that wasn’t on offer then and I actually just wanted some fucking recognition and respect for the work done, and trusted to not drive 40 miles to work drunk. Jesus. In the NHS. What a wonderfully supportive place to work.
*(something that has receded with age but would happen once every year or two – a moment of severe dizziness, which sometimes would last a couple of minutes and sometimes most of a day. I have never understood what triggered it, but I learned how to control it. I believe it may be linked to migraines which my mother allegedly had.) (“Allegedly”? Yeah, but that’s another story).
Since leaving the NHS in 2004/5, I have a string of jobs which I had great intentions of staying in but which lasted no more than a year (“coincidentally” similar with romantic relationships until much later). Partly because I usually hated my “leadership”’s style (more toxic stick based than carrot based). Partly because of my values – looking back at this time, I think I grew enough of a spine to leave my life in the NHS and other aspects of personal life at the time, my ability to have patience and tolerate bullshit drastically reduced. Partly because I got bored.
I have basically had one leader in all my working life who I still remember fondly from about 2005 – Director of IT at Allerdale Borough Council at the time – about my age but a lot more intelligent and definitely led with carrots and was helping to encourage me towards leading on some (relatively) major system implementation projects in the council at the time. Lots of responsibility and lots of faith in my capabilities. The team was almost spot on and we had a good laugh balanced with great feedback and successes in the council – I feel like the overall reputation was one of respect by the other departments. I enjoyed this job a lot. I left because I had a yearning to explore the world….
For that and other private reasons I decided to leave and ended up moving near Manchester for a year, had another IT support job I didn’t enjoy that much and then sold everything and went travelling for about a year. During that time, I had some time in Toronto and managed to get a job in Sales (with hints of Project Management). That lasted less than 6 months, for a variety of reasons. That my employer at the small software reseller Co was probably a borderline psychopath who had a bit of a temper where he would occasionally get triggered by anything less than perfection being produced and would slam doors, and scream expletives at me (only moments after being full of smiles and light) didn’t really help my love of the work. I needed the job, until I didn’t. That’s not the whole story but the other parts of that revolved around what I now believe to be ADHD vs relationships – an excuse, yes, and still an amount of regret therein. But I still believe that no-one should be in a job where their leaders are shouting and swearing at them and generally making them feel worthless.
After that I actually managed 4 years in one place, but that was in University as a “mature” student (I still skipped lectures to have a pint and some food in the student union bar at lunch time which then developed into a 12 hour binge drinking session with students much younger than me – see? Never really quite grew up – to this day I believe that never having kids meant that I never fully grew up into “normal” adulthood)) (I still managed to graduate with a 2:1 BA (Hons) in International Relations with Mandarin Chinese – no I can’t speak the language at all now really, but I had a great year on the exchange program in Kunming, Yunnan – lots of exploration, meeting people from around the world and yes, lots of drinking and also smoking by that point. A packet of 20 cigs was about £3.50 there vs around £9 or £10 in the UK… It destroyed us). Cheap beer was about the same – £1.25 a bottle of lager or cheaper…
After graduating in 2012, I knew I needed a job to make some decent money. As I didn’t want to be in IT tech support type roles – tired of people complaining about tech not working properly or forgetting their passwords takes its toll – but I had Project Management experience, that when I decided to pay for an intensive boot camp style course to get the PRINCE2 Practitioner qualification.
I lasted 3 months in my first full time, full on Project Coordinator role… I hated that company and it’s policies. I very much did not fit there. Really, in some ways, only my second job in the private sector. People in private sector roles would always make fun of us in public sector jobs pointing out how much easier it was to work there, and this role really mad me understand how much more stressful the expectations were. Grass being greener and all that. It was the only job I have ever been fired from too – for not meeting performance, a result of trusting people when they say things as being true when it turned out to not quite be the case…
9 months later of unemployment and dreams of success, achievement being dashed (there’s a pattern of this…) – the imposter voices regaining their strength and status in my head… And fate would have its way again by way of a random actually good recruitment agent finding my CV and getting me an interview in a software company – I was supposed to be doing Sales but actually started off in Account Management and for 6 months of the 11-12 months I lasted there, it was a lot of fun and very rewarding (monetarily, and socially – a great laugh to be fair). My line manager was a full on nerd and absolutely bonkers but knew how to create relationships through humour in the most bizarre way – sometimes making jokes with customers which most people wouldn’t dare try getting away with, for example, calling a customer he was waiting on a signed purchase order from at the end of the month to hit his sales targets and saying “If you don’t get that order to me by 5pm Fri a kitten dies” and emailing a stock image of a sad looking cute, fluffy kitten to said customer as they were on the phone. It got a laugh, and an order. Ethical? Well the guy was promising an order anyway… Memorable? Absolutely. Would I do that? Absolutely not. Dark humour is always a risky bet. There was also the story of a group of Texans asking if everyone in the UK wears a tuxedo and drives an Aston Martin to work. No, just our CEO (no tux)…
It was a small co built from the ground up for years with a very informal culture. Imagine a nice, small version of the early days of Google and Mark Zuckerberg before they made millions. We had a small on-site gym, every so often a professional sports massage therapist came in and anyone in the entire company could go for a free massage and weren’t expected to make the time away from the desk back. The owner drove to work every day in an Aston Martin Vantage V12 and no-one hated him for showing off. We had far too many smoking breaks in the Sales team… I even loved the occasional 12 hour shifts there as we were fed pizza and the camaraderie in the team was competitive but supportive. A VERY rare team. I joined 6 months before investors got involved…. Which is when it started going “proper” corporate and dull as you can imagine, and lots of people left including the then owner of the Co as he was edged out – coincidentally all those loyal to him resigned. Funny old world.
At that time my sister died of cancer too, so that was a bit of a life changing moment. She left me some money which, me being me, I was utterly shit at managing and although I had another great time of liberation with and went travelling a bit again (a bit disastrous that time), and then decided to finally do what I really wanted to do from the age of 16… go self-employed…
I have never been very good at being told what to do….
So, the only decision was what to do in my finally realised belief (well, more like hope) that I could finally be self-employed and do what I want, how I want (ethically – my learned values are strong, perhaps often to a fault which means I get in my own way of getting that illusive success), when I want, with who I want etc etc.
I felt people often came to me for advice for all sorts of things so how about coaching? Let’s have a go at coaching – I did a lot of training in IT explaining how to use computers, and ironically people would often talk to me about their lives looking for relationship advice. I had one of those faces or auras where random strangers would spill their woes to me in cafes and bars (not drunk) whether I wanted it or not…
Prior to that decision, others I had met over the years had suggested I get into counselling, but that required a degree in Psychology and that meant stats and research and I knew damn well I would find that too tedious.
So… Between 2016 and 2021 (well, really more like March 2020 to be more precise) I decided to work on a sort of hybrid Sales and Life Coaching.
And actually, I did ok at it. Got some lovely and excellent testimonials and nearly earned a part time wage after 5 years of trying… Which I believe is better than quite a lot of private/independent coaches!
Obviously in March 2020, shit happened. Not just the C word, but my dad died and I won’t rehash all that but it led to me moving to Ireland. It was an emotionally drained time when I was introduced to the idea I might have ADHD, plus a realisation of other labels such as potentially being HSP – I clearly am not very resilient… It takes me time to get over obstacles and traumas. A lot of childhood shit came flooding back to haunt and I didn’t react very well to much of it. I thought last year I was coming out of it, but quite honestly, I wasn’t and only 3 years later am I hoping that I am now actually feeling more ready to take on the world again, only in a reframed manner that honours even more my introvert needs for quiet with limited emotional energy and sensitivity.
As a therapist and others have reminded me in that time – self-development is not a straight line goes up graph.
So, at the “midlife” age of 50something, here we go again…
As noted, I am not actually closing the coaching business and if anyone wants coaching, I still have a Limited Co, fully registered with the state here, fully able to take on private and business clients.
My primary focus now, however, will be entering the world of visual design which has been an armchair interest for years.
New Story
New Story Web Services: That’s the working name I intend going with – or more precisely the Irish version:
“Scéal Nua Web Services”
My coaching business is “Scéal Nua Coaching Ltd”. Scéal = Story, “Nua” = New.
As with life changes so with new businesses, and also as with people’s branding requirements.
I love playing with colour, picking palettes, and also do find myself hypnotised by typeface choices – I think it brings a sense of order within my otherwise chaotic brain.
I am already enjoying looking up design trends, creating a virtual sketchbook of ideas, images, fonts, layouts etc etc.
Of course, I haven’t actually created a website for the new business but have made a deadline to do so. Naturally, I’ll do that a week before the deadline…
Honest.
I may start talking about design stuff here instead at some point…
Intended ideal customers
Due to experience and interests, I intend to work with the following :
- Primarily based Ireland & UK, but really anywhere
- Coaches of all flavours
- Independent consultants (for example, I just made a website for a friend of mine who has his own “Chief of Operations As A Service” consultancy)
- Eco/Sustainability focused organisations, and natural world related
- Similarly, eco/sustainable tourism related
- (Video) Gaming related sites
Wish me luck – as much with myself as with business!
Finally, an ask
I oscillate between not being bothered about getting officially assessed for ADHD and being hyperfocused on the idea. I have had a challenge in the past 2 years even finding out how to actually go about it here in Ireland and haven’t got very far.
I have recently tried again to find out the costs for getting privately assessed and it’s basically this:
- €150 for an initial chat to see if it’s worth me going for a full assessment, if so then
- 2 x 2hr consultations for €500 ea, or €1,000 total
All of which is quite out of reach at the moment and for the foreseeable.
So, to be frank, I am going to start adding any money donated/earned from my blog and Ko-Fi donations to a pot to help save for the ADHD assessment (rather than buying seeds or plants as I currently do) (especially since compost guy never got back to me so I can’t plant anything outside really!)
