I am dyslexic. I didn't know it till I was in my late 20's when I was questioned about it.
I know I had a hard time with some things. I just figured everyone had trouble with this stuff.
You know the saying. “I'm having a dyslexic moment” or something similar. I didn't have words
swim across the pages, so I figured I just wasn't as skillful as other people. Everyone has
straights and weaknesses right? Left and right. Everyone gets confused about that.
Then I found out that what is shown as dyslexic is the extreme cases. Not every dyslexic has
swimming letters. Dyslexic is a wiring difference in the brain, and its effects are varied.
Like I have an issue with keeping left and right straight but I don't have an issue with north
and south. Some have issues with both. When I do any more than basic math I'm relying on counting
tricks like fingers or dots on paper to keep everything in order. Back in the day I thought I was
just bad at math, now I understand that's part of dyslexia. Even friendship and social is effected
by dyslexia.
Even with all the issues that come with dyslexia I have did my associates degree, learned to code, finished a Nanodegree from Udacity. Managed teams of up to 25 people. Wrote How To manuals for common network and computer issues. Trouble shoot obscure issues, and fixed critical servers under the stress of production deadlines waiting on it.
The hardest part of all of this is trying to tell other people I understand all this and I'm good at it. With dyslexia I miss social ques and its hard to make and keep friends, and in the field of hardware administrator its all about who you know. Not really what you know. I have worked side by side with people with out a degree. no real background. No network understanding. No previous work experience. When I ask how did you get this job? The answer is always the same. “My buddy got me this job.”
It use to get me upset. I been working my butt off doing this stuff learning all I can for about 25 years now, and I would get the odd job, or gig to setup stuff for someone. But didn't really make an income from it. Couldn't quit my job to work in the field I been wanting to work in. and here some guy that woke up one day and thought “hay I want to try this admin thing” and in a couple phone calls has a job paying good money.
Now days, I don't get upset anymore. Its a pointless waste of energy. I figured out if I can show my work rather than try to tell someone about it. Ill be able to show off how much I have done, plus if I can freelance my software skills or even build a software empire on google play I could make my own streams of income. I could freelance my own hours. Or I could get a 9-5 and just build stuff for other people.
So here is my work, my display case, for the world to see how much I have done and what I can do.