Hi there people. I think that, despite me not wanting to be in this situation, there really aren't a lot of people who fit this subreddit's anti-work moto as much as I do.
It wasn't easy to write all of this (emotionally speaking) but there it is, my little story. I'm sorry it's a little long, but I really couldn't make it any shorter. First off, I need to mention that I have asperger syndrom (although you wouldn't notice if easily unless you knew me well), and it clearly had an impact. I was diagnosed when I was 30 years old.
Anyways, here we go:
-Graduated at 27 years old with a master's degree from a top 8 business school in my country
-spent 80% of the next 6 years unemployed due to how difficult it was to find a proper job / career start at the level of my degree + the usual hardship of being an asperger: the few jobs I had, I felt extremely stressed and got sick several times
-Had to resort to cheating in order to cover the gaps to become desirable for employers: my sister's husband, who has his own business, gave me a work certificate to cover 3 years of unemployment from his own company. He's my reference, meaning he, the owner of the company, covers my back in case of a background check (I did it with a consulting firm that hired me for a few months: it works). Then I pretended that I was a community manager for 1.5 years (freelance) during covid, for several gaming communities, and since it's freelance + too many potential customers, no one cares enough to check.
-Recently, at 32 (March this year) I started to work for a small company that helps disabled people find jobs thanks to partnerships with bigger companies, and I loved it. Had to quit the job in June, but the company owner called me last month to make me come back (I'll start in early November, in a week) because she loved working with me AND (that's the cherry on top) she'd like me to be the boss in her place next year, when she retires at 71…which means I'd be the one developing the business since there's only 3 of us so far.
Tldr: my life only really started this year, at 32-33 years old, and if I work hard, I could even take over the company and, who knows, be successful in the long term if I really manage to expand it. The problem is that I feel super guilty for being such a cheat AND such an incredibly late starter: when people look at my resume, they think it's quite a decent resume. Not a lot of gaps, good degrees, interesting and varied experiences. Plus, in real life, I'm objectively a very kind, authentic and honest person (I don't have that many qualities, at least let me mention them lol ), so people really genuinely like to be around me.
The problem is that I have a very hard time being confident in myself in this situation: I know this resume of mine, except my degrees, is not as good as they say, I know I'm an anomaly who's been unemployed for a very long time, so I'm sad every time I think about it, and I'm scared for the future too, even though I should be confident: I love the job, the place is handicap-friendly, and so on.
Most things aren't going badly in my life though: I have a loving family, good friends, a girlfriend, no real big financial problems since I was born in a family that's doing ok financially, plus Europe is not nearly as hard to live in without a job. I'm healthy, I go out a lot, I'm not depressed or anything, it's just that I've been struggling professionnally ever since I got my degree.
What do you think? How can I get rid of this feeling? I'm going to have to focus on this job if I want to achieve something, and I have to stop thinking “I'm that guy that started at 33 years old and who has to lie otherwise people would look at him very weirdly regarding what he did during all those years”.
Thank you very much, please take care whever you guys live, I know it's hard out there for everyone, even having a job can sometimes be worse than not having one at all depending on the situaton.
NB: I'm European, my apologies if I made a few mistakes here and there