It sounds like both you and Saja have been extremely fortunate in the way that things have worked out for you.

It’s great to hear that positive work roles like this do happen, which makes me more confident that I’ll be able to achieve things in my new venture.

Here’s hoping!

James

Thanks for the positive feedback – it is really welcome!

My line of work wouldn’t lend itself to being home-office based quite as much as yours, unfortunately. I’m going to be doing a bit of web/email hosting/management, which will need face to face meetings with people, and some PC repair and upgrade work, which will most likely take place in other people’s homes.

Hopefully it’ll work out and act as a nice second income stream.

If you, ahem, need any websites hosting or email wrangling, then get in touch.

James

Ultimately the company I was contracting for offered me a permanent job in which I could still work remotely *and* get paid the same amount as I did as a contractor. Considering that the company was in California and I was in Massachusetts, it worked really well. I got to stay home and make California wages, and my manager always made sure that I was working on projects I liked.

It sounds like a great idea to slowly build up your own business and see how that goes.

That sounds like a good plan. In 2002 I started a sole proprietorship here in Holland, as a translator. That’s been working really well for me: no employees, no colleagues, total control over my work environment and schedule. In general, remote contract work–in the sense of isolated assignments for different clients that you do in your own office, not theirs–is an ideal setup for an autistic person, at least in my experience. Almost all contact is over e-mail; every project has a distinct beginning and end, and a very clear deadline; and my clients leave me to translate as I see fit (sometimes with interaction in a subsequent editing round, sometimes not).

I hope you’ll enjoy the coming phase! Sounds like a positive change.

Yes, this is something that will likely happen once both of our kids are at school, which is either just over a year or eighteen months way (depending on how our local authority decide to split intake next year).

My wife used to work as a mental health nurse, and whilst she is keeping her professional registration up to date just in case, she is unlikely to return to the profession. I can’t blame her for that – she spent 15 years in a job that whilst rewarding is also very tough.

She’s not sure yet what she’d like to do with her time, but it is very likely she will work in some way.

In other news, I’ve been mulling over the idea of setting up my own company for months, and during a nice day off from work with my wife yesterday we had a chat about how that might work. We’ve decided that I’ll set up as a sole trader, which is a less formal way of trading here in the UK and will start slowly building things up. I’ll invest a small amount of money to start things rolling and will run it as a side line alongside my regular work. We’ll see how things go. At a minimum it should make us a bit of handy spending money, and give me a better idea of whether this is something I’d like to pursue more formally. If the work doesn’t come in, well, I’ll have lost nothing barring time invested.

James

How about your wife working some? Assuming your kids are old enough to swing both of you working, and she has a career she’d like to return to or begin on. I know that in our case, I’d really like to move toward a situation where my husband and I both work, to relieve him of some of the earnings pressure and to fulfill my desire to use my brain. Ideally we’d both be working part time (say 30 hours a week). Might some kind of dual-earner setup work for your family? Just throwing out ideas here.

Ah – but none of those you cite who have changed careers are moving into IT, are they?

I’m sure the picture isn’t quite as black and white as I’ve painted, but I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that technical jobs like mine – systems administrator – are hard to come by once you are in your 40s.

Something I glossed over somewhat is that I don’t live in or near London. I live in Yorkshire, and whilst there are suitable sys admin jobs around from time to time, their frequency is far fewer than if I were to live in or near London. I’ve put family ahead of work in this respect, and opted for the nice relaxed place to live with the drawback of not having the wide choice of available jobs. Would I move to London again to increase my job opportunities? Absolutely not.

I agree that a change of career is entirely doable at my age and that it may prove to be the best option. But as I replied to Rachel above, figuring out what that change of career would be isn’t providing many leads right now.

I’ve already started thinking about running a hosting business, which was actually prompted by someone asking if I could host something for them.

The trouble with this idea isn’t the technical side of things, which I’m sure I could handle, but the other things that go with it.

It would be a lot of work to get it set up, and would clearly have to run in parallel to my current commitments, as the business on it’s own won’t keep my kids fed, at least not in the short to medium term.

To be honest my life already feels very full right now. At times in recent weeks I’ve felt overloaded simply from having too many things to do. Add business responsibilities within a new company I set up and it might be too much.

Does this sound like I’m trying to talk myself out of doing it? Yup – I probably am.

You are right, of course, it is my expectations that are getting derailed. The trouble is I don’t at the moment know how to live my life other than by these expectations that I’ve had for so many years, so it really does feel like it’s my life itself that is derailed.

A change of course does sound attractive to me right now, and has done on and off for some considerable time. But a change to what? That’s the difficult bit for me. I clearly need to spend some time talking it through with people.

Thanks for the offer of a supportive ear – I may well take you up on it.

James