MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Ok, I'm asking for all you loonies for life advice

I went through a similar crisis recently. I graduated from college with a Music degree (my focus was music technology, technically) and took a job doing QA at a company that makes music software.

After ten years there, I found myself without any room for advancement and getting tired of the QA grind. I discovered, however, that I had sort of painted myself into a corner. My experience was all QA, but most QA jobs want some kind of CS background which I didn't have. But I couldn't really go back to what I studied and work in a recording studio, because I'd missed out on ten years of paying dues. I'd be starting over in my mid-30s, working for free as an intern/slave, competing with people ten years younger, and trying to keep my mortgage paid at the same time. I was uniquely suited for the job I was doing and not much else.

I can tell you for sure the ADHD thing is just boredom. I used to do the same thing. A lot of the tests we ran were pretty mindless, and after a while I found myself running them entirely on autopilot, almost literally surfing the web with one hand while testing with the other.

Really, the first thing you need to do is figure out what it is you really want to do. If you're anything like me, this will be tough, because the stuff you love to do is not anything you could possibly make money from. I wouldn't necessarily recommend taking another job doing the same thing, unless your current position is completely untenable. After the novelty of a new place wears off, you're likely to end up right back in the same place you are right now. All you can do is look around at what's out there, and try on as many hats as you can. When you find one that fits, you'll know it.

In my case, I basically got by with a combination of good friends and dumb luck. I've always dabbled in programming, although I foolishly chose not to pursue it in college. At work, I started writing little scripts in Javascript to automate some of the most mindless tests and alleviate some of the boredom. That led to me writing a few simple C++ apps for testing, and helping the build engineer with installer scripts. I'm friends with some of the senior developers, and when they found out I was unhappy and looking to leave, they worked out a way for me to step into a junior software engineer position. It's occasionally terrifying (if my little scripts and apps are the equivalent of changing the oil in your car, the app I work on now is the space shuttle), but my boredom has utterly evaporated, and I've learned more in the last 6 months than I have in the previous 10 years. I've even surprised myself and have been able to make a measurable contribution almost right out of the gate.

Best of luck to you, I definitely know what you're feeling right now.