What is your employment situation?

I'm currently working full time and doing very well at the job. Work always seems to keep me more level, maybe because my mind is focused on one thing and not going a million miles a minute for the most part. I do have to catch myself and slow down a bit at times though. It's almost like I feel more hypomanic while working and more depressive in free time or outside of work for the most part. I do have a history of just getting up and quitting jobs too without even thinking of the consequences.

Oliveira wrote:What the topic says. I have been unemployed and on benefits for 1.5+ year and I am applying for disability -- law here pretty much forces me to. I've been diagnosed in October 2012 and so far the longest stable time has been a few months. As of today I am again rapid cycling daily which kind of makes it difficult to get/hold a job. I'm curious how others are doing.

So sorry to hear that, man. I hear you. Sometimes, I wish I could tell my job to f**k off, but I don't have that luxury because I am completely alone (no friends, no family to support me), and I'm not an American citizen yet, so I wouldn't receive unemployment benefits.

Fortunately, my cycling is not as rapid as yours. I'd say mine is on the order of weeks. On most days, I feel like I have no energy for work, but I'm somehow able to get through the days and get some work done. I think the thing that keeps me going is looking forward to that one hour of my biggest possible high in the gym right after work. That is the ONE THING THAT IS KEEPING ME ALIVE.

I'm employed full-time as a computer software engineer.

So I'm the one oddball that clicked the middle "partially employed" button. As requested, I'll state my hours: I average about 90 hours / week when I'm working. If you only look at my average hours it looks full time, but if you were to look at the calendar the reason for clicking the "partial" button makes sense. I am highly driven, went to uni for 6 years, did two degrees in a law-based discipline and the start of an engineering one (in addition to operating and growing my first business) when, wouldn't you know it, I had a big shiny job opportunity come up, so I sold business #1 and was ecstatic to put those new pieces of university paper to work. In relatively short order I fell hard and fast, I couldn't consistently be "mentally there" with the dream job. In a year and a half after selling the business and taking that job I had lost everything I made when I sold my business, had literally ran away from the dream job, and was an additional $80,000 in debt. Then, good old bipolar,... I was off with my 2nd business, fast growth, new customers every week, but it wasn't long before bipolar ate that one. Now I'm on my third business, and its been slowly but steadily growing for the past 5 years. I got so crazy that I actually had the cognition and moxy to say hell with money and chase a dream that I really wanted (life got clear for me when I was at the bottom of the proverbial barrel). Surprisingly its worked. Some weeks are a train-wreck, and others are pure genius. But, overall I'm still here, waking up, and plugging ideas and hours into God's big calculator

Crazy Canuck wrote:So I'm the one oddball that clicked the middle "partially employed" button.

Being oddball is exacly the state I love to be.

Thank you Lanka