So I didn’t get the job at the conservation charity, which was a bit of a blow.

But actually I had started to feel the role was too junior for my interest-motivated brain. Busy-bored is kryptonite to an ADHD mind.

It is a real challenge – when you know you need to maintain your work/life balance – to find a role that is challenging enough for the brain but allows enough energy left to live.

I am a carer to disabled children, and I use the word disabled in a legal sense because obviously on the outside AuDHD does not look like a disability. My lovely mum asked me why I couldn’t just get a job at a supermarket, given that most of the roles I’m applying for at the moment are only just above minimum wage. I’ve often had the same thought. I’m not adverse to basic labour – one of my favourite jobs at uni was in a packing factory.

But I’m needed here.

I can’t articulate it though. How I have to hold myself available to support my husband and children, to regulate them, as well as managing my own AuDHD. How I need the flexibility of a work-from-home job so I can direct my fickle energy when it shows up, even if that’s at 6am or midnight. I can’t explain that I grieve for the me that could do a full-time senior manager role, if only I could clone myself so someone was here to do laundry, clean the toilets, soothe a dysregulated family member, chase down an EHCP, or request a school accommodation. Or even take the dogs for a walk. (Dog walkers and cleaners earn significantly more an hour than any of the roles I’m applying for.) I’ve been waiting a week to clean out the hamster, because Wednesday-Friday are the only times I get an hour with no-one home.

On paper it sounds pathetic. Just do it, write lists, get up earlier, hire help, ask for help, you can do it all if you just try.

But you can’t.

I watched a reel recently where someone said it’s a lie that women can do it all. They can maybe do it sequentially but not simultaneously and I loved that distinction. Parenting wasn’t meant to still need so much energy.

However, realising that you can’t do it all is one thing, finding a job to fit in with that realisation is something else entirely.

And it turns out that’s something that far too many people experience. People with chronic illnesses, burnout, bereavement, unpaid carers – of children, partners, parents – all feel this deeply.

I know this, because a post I wrote for LinkedIn went a bit viral, by my standards.

This has had 44k impressions so far. I’ve seen paid marketing do less.

It clearly touched a nerve. From the comments, from the personal messages, it’s so clear how not alone I am. Life is getting more complex, schools more rigid, salaries lower (so, so much lower), people are living longer, public services are at breaking point.

And yet people still question why you have gaps in your CV or are applying for a job without knowing a specific piece of software. Love, I’ve learned more new software in 20 years than you can name, I think I’ll manage.

The poor sweet HR person who had to tell me last week that I didn’t get the part time junior marketing role explained that I hadn’t evidenced knowledge of GDPR in my interview.

I mean, what?

I’ve been managing data protection rules in marketing since before it was even called GDPR. Just be honest, I failed the ‘chemistry fit’ second interview because I was old enough to be their mum.

Anyway, I don’t have some pithy words of wisdom to finish this post with. It’s a bit like the therapist I’ve been seeing, who feels like she isn’t helping because we’re not doing CBT and 8 weeks isn’t long enough to dive deep. I keep telling her, she’s holding space for me. She lets me speak. She acknowledges that there aren’t easy fixes.

She listens.

Sometimes that’s all you can do.