Autism

If it helps my first real, full time job was when I was 28. Before that I was contracting and even the thing I had at 28 was technically a year to year contract although it allowed for one years notice. So it was technically contract butall work is sorta a long term contract and the year notice made it better than most.

You're not asking for advice about specific jobs etc, so I won't say anything on that topic.

But as a somewhat older autistic person who is approaching middle age, I can tell you from my own experience that it does get better.

There were a lot of times when I thought something was impossible for me, just because I couldn't think it all the way through / wrap my head around it in advance. It took me a long time to figure out that while those things are comforting, they're not at all necessary.

It's a very human thing to make mistakes, and it's equally human to not know what you're doing at first. You will be anxious and uncomfortable at times, and there's going to be plenty of things you are forced to do despite not feeling at all ready. Heck it took me like 15 years of trial and error to feel like I'd learned enough about socializing to be passable at small talk with coworkers. That kind of stuff was full-manual for me for ages, but with enough time and practice (and self-love!) I did eventually start to build some intuition for the more routine stuff and let go of some of the self-consciousness involved.

Everyone's path is different, and I don't know whether you're dealing with other disability besides autism. But understand that there's nothing wrong with you. You're just wired differently than the average person, and that isn't a bad thing unless you let it be. Eventually I was able to cobble together some synthesis of my understanding of myself and my understanding of neurotypical people, into something that works well enough for me. It can be very hard to intentionally reflect on ourselves without being too negative, but it's worth it. I hope you are able to find something similar.

There's nothing wrong with you. You are allowed to not work. You àre allowed to not feel guilty or bad about it. Honestly, if our world wasn't terrible like it is, probably only like 10% of people would have to work at all, 90% or more of our economy is setup to produce all kinds of luxury goods that aren't necessary. The only reason there's this much to do is because everyone always wants more, more, more, everyone wants to go travel everywhere, drive an expensive car, have the latest phone and so on and so on. If you can not participate in this stupid shit, all the more power to you, more should be able to.

Does your partner have a problem with you not working? Any other people that are close to you? You're feeling worthless/shame/guilt, usually that only happens because other people shame you or treat you so. Who treats you like that? If it's a general "society" where this feeling comes from, fuck them. Society is not worth your respect or consideration, the amount of fucked it is, you don't owe it anything. If it is coming from people close to you... Let's just say maybe they shouldn't be close to you.

Does your partner feel like you're a burden? Did you ask them?

Sadly, unemployment among autistic individuals is really high (vaguely remember a 80% statistic)... Though, specific fields can have extremely high prevelence of autistic people (again vaguely remember a statistic about 20% of software engineers being autistic).

We are living in a world where our needs are ignored (if not mocked) and our super valuable skills are underutilized... You should remember that you can only control your behavior, it's not entirely your fault you cannot find a job. We are not broken, the world is.

I know you are not looking for tips, but I am going to give you one anyway... Make your special interests your career. Not only will you get to spend much more time on them, you will also find more people to share your passion. Additionally, the time and effort you have spent in them will make you a high value hire.