Work and SAD
July 10, 2007, 05:37 PM
As a lifelong sufferer of social anxiety, probably the most difficult thing for me has been dealing with people in the work environment. Outside of work, we can choose with whom we wish to associate, but at work we're forced to coexist in close confines for excruciatingly long periods of time with people having nasty or annoying dispositions. It's just not a natural for someone with SAD. Over time, I developed severe chronic insomnia and eventually it became unbearable.
I decided to take some time off. That was just a little over two years ago. It's remarkable how much better your problem solving skills are when you are well rested and relatively anxiety free. I started to enjoy life again. I spent quite a bit of time reading and learning about psychology. I watched a lot of baseball. I took naps. I worked on my self-esteem. It's was a long, slow process but I gradually started to feel better about myself.
The only problem with being unemployed is there's not much money in it. I had saved quite a bit of money at my previous job and was living off my savings, but my bank account had begun to look rather dismal. I had thoughts of what it was going to be like to be homeless once my savings ran out. I was still quite a few months away from that point, but the thought frequently crossed my mind.
It's funny how things work out if you keep plugging away. While unemployed, I had been teaching myself a new programming language called PHP, which is widely used in Web site development. I have a B.S. in computer science and 10 plus years experience as a software engineer, which made it fairly easy to learn the new language. I started doing a little volunteer work to improve my skills and get some real world experience. Then one day I answered an ad for a PHP developer. I was given some small projects to work on at home. In the beginning I was just doing bug fixes, but gradually they gave me more involved work. I met with the owner and not long after that, they gave me a project to build from the ground up. They seem to be very happy with my work. It's nice to be appreciated.
Finally, I'm enjoying my career. I majored in computer science because I loved to program, but may career as a software engineer was completely joyless due to chronic insomnia. That is no longer a problem. I now work long hours -- sometimes seven days a week, but I like it. If I can't sleep at night, I can always take a nap during the day. When I get bored, I can play with the dog or post something on the SAS forum. My wife is away at work quite a bit and every once in a while I get a little lonely, but all I have to do is remember what it was like working in a crowded engineering office and the loneliness soon passes.
