Yeah, I used to be something of a tech geek, too, before my illness symptoms became so severe I had to quit my job and drop out of school.

I worked for years in academic research and a big part of my job was programming Access using Visual Basic to make aps that helped the primary investigators, and their research assistants, manage their studies and the research data.

Later on, I cut my work hours a bit to go back to school to study cognitive engineering--that's using what we know about how people think to help design/engineer tools of any kind.

While I was in graduate school, I was part of the Cognitive Science Initiative, which was a special, interdisciplinary graduate study group (it was too small to call it a department) that focused on anything having to do with Cognitive Science. I loved it there, but it had a high attrition rate as most of the graduate students that enrolled just didn't understand cognitive science.

About this time, I started doing computer animation which I loved because it allowed me to use both my computer programming skills and artistic skills/abilities.

While in grad school, I got a job at a very, very large tech company based in my city. I was an engineer in their cognitive engineering labs and worked on all kinds of products (PCs, mobile devices, printers, etc.) but mostly on their massive website. I loved the work, but it was my first time working at a tech company and I hated the cut-throat culture as I was used to team work.

It was said cut-throat culture that helped exacerbate my MI, and I eventually had to quit because I couldn’t handle both that and graduate school. Soon, graduate school had to go, too, because I became disabled.

That was ten years ago, and for much of that time I was able to stay at least a bit techy by building and maintaining my own website for many years. But eventually, that had to go too. So did gaming.

I no longer do any engineering or design, of any sort, and since I make no money, I’m relegated to using computers that I inherit from family members who have updated their equipment. So, I’m always using out-dated stuff. There's no money for new software. I don’t even have a smart phone, just a flip phone that I use for emergencies.

I miss being techy, and hope I can recover some parts of me that my MI has robbed, eventually. At the very least, I hope I can build another website and get back into gaming.

In the meantime, I live vicariously through the guys on Silicon Valley and their pain makes me not miss so much working for the Hooli-type company that illness forced me to leave, as I was not cut out for that kind of culture. (I would rather be a nice person. )

--Ceara1010