I kind of fell into accounting out of nessecity. I never in a million years would have picked it as a career willingly. I had my son really young and needed a job. I married my child's father and his parents owned a masonry company and needed a bookkeeper, so one of his family members who was an accountant trained me. I worked for them for five years and then went on to work for a big accounting firm and then to an IT tech firm where I did a duel role in accounting and inside sales. I hate numbers and math, but I kind of did what I had to do for my family. I took a lot of sick leave. Some of it for psychological reasons but a lot of it for physical reasons. Stress not only incites me to have episodes but it also manifests as massive physical problems.

I haven't worked in around 2 years now, well since I moved to Sweden. We've just been kind of scraping by. Been dealing with some medical problems and then my massive manic (my shrink says mixed) episode this past spring. But it's getting to the point where we are really feeling the financial crunch so I have to figure something out. I'd thought about going back to school, but I don't think I could handle going back full time. I don't think I'd do well at a desk job either which limits my options, especially given my work experience.

My husband keeps telling me to find something I'm passionate about and something that would make me happy. I sometimes do makeup for a photographer friend for his photo shoots and thought about seeing what I could do to turn that into a job, perhaps looking for training courses or something. I'm not sure whether something like that would be less stressful career path or not. But being creative helps me channel my negative emotions, but coming up with creative careers that are viable is proving difficult.

To be completely honest the thought of working at all really scares me. I'm terrified that ho matter what the job is I won't be able to handle it. It just kind of paralyzes me.