I can sympathize with what you're going through OP. I have similar struggles myself (primarily with severe anxiety) and wouldn't wish most of what I have had to go through on my worst enemy.

I do have one comment though:

You mention stability in your goals, and how you want to find stability. What is stability to you? I've struggled for years with trying to find stability but it often just leads me back to thinking that there really is no such thing. You just never know what is going to happen in life. Finding a job and having stable employment are hard, and will likely only get harder as we age. Relationships have ups and downs, and their downs can be incredibly challenging to navigate. Most of us (at least in Europe) don't have the luxury of building wealth to escape the 9-5 grind. We simply need to work (and stay employable) until we have the ability to retire. I don't know how things work in your country, but here in Sweden I can't even start to collect my state pension until I turn 69. I need to find a way to remain employable until I am 69, or amass enough wealth to not need to worry about paying my bills if I don't have stable employment.

I could go on and on but honestly I think stability is a myth. Life is inherently unstable. But we human beings are also incredibly resiliant.

Take care of yourself. I wish you all the best OP.

I would suggest building something on your own, choose your own processes, work however you want, with something that gives you motivation, and see if you are able to ship and release the things you build, attract users and lifetime management of the products. Now if that works great the problem is not with you.

I would also like to add that I have read multiple comments talking about their struggles with either some neurodivergent diagnosis, or with depression. I've never seen this side of HN, and I am very grateful to have been a part of it.

I haven't met anyone in a similar boat, so seeing I'm not alone is very healing.

> I do not feel like I have the mental space to keep track of everything I need to do, and I do not even feel like I am aware of what I'm doing anymore.

Have you tried keeping a document logging what your thoughts/steps while doing a task were? I find this helps me stay on track. You don't need to write it in a clean way, just bullet points to reconstruct the steps you've taken, progress, decisions you need to take etc.

You can start with something as simple as "I downloaded the code from 'X', 'Y' is the shell command I used to build the project, now how do I reproduce bug 'Z'? Is there an existing script I can run or do I need to ask someone for a command, blah blah"...

I find this is very useful when working on unfamiliar tasks or when I'm finding it hard to get traction on a task (due to procrastination or anything else). Just writing something has a way of making yourself get any clarity you can, and if you lose traction again, the notes you wrote are something you can use to get started again.

It's quite freeing to not have to have all the context in your head all the time.

This sounds a lot like the shame and frustration people with ADD feel when untreated.

I know several people who suffer with ADD, who are extremely intelligent and talented, and felt the exact same emotions before they were diagnosed. Those emotions were _much_ alleviated once treated, mostly through pharmacological means. Anecdotal but seems a strong pattern to me.

I appreciate the candor and wish the best for you.

Sadly, I will also tell you that once you do resume your job search, this post is going to hurt your chances.

It shouldn't. It really, really shouldn't. I don't respect my colleagues who reject people for stuff like this. But I can't change the world.

I don't have a solution other than to make such posts private and share only with people you trust. Or start a new blog on a new domain so employers don't associate it with you.

My story has a lot of similarities to yours…

I got diagnosed with ADHD 2 years ago, at age 35.

It was one of the most important things I’ve ever done.

I strongly encourage you to keep looking into this.

Please be gentle to yourself. You’ve been fighting your whole life with one hand tied behind your back, and no one even knew.

I used to co-supervise a PhD student who suffered from severe anxiety, she was good but her anxiety stood in her way almost all of the time. You could see that she used up 3/4 of her brain just on being anxious, there wasn't much power left to do the actual work to any standard. It's a horrible disease. (and yeah, she was on medication and diagnosed).

Also, find the right manager and the right role. With a manager that expects a highly regimented routine, you probably aren't going to do so well. With a manager that lets you explore and be more creative, you might do a lot better.

I've found one of my own strengths is in finding ways to use existing features, maybe with slight modifications, together to do the things that customers want, allowing the team to avoid several large projects and the resulting maintenance burden entirely. My first manager understood the value of that and we worked really well together for a few years. After a reorg, my subsequent manager considered it lazy and PIP after six months. I don't fault them, and different management styles work for different people. But make sure you find someone you're compatible with.

The author should probably read The Checklist Manifesto. It's a great book that has some excellent advice about getting things done with higher quality by, not surprisingly given the title, using checklists.