Ask HN: What job did you leave IT for?

I've recently been diagnosed with an illness that has left me little to no concentration and a very low level of comprehension,as such I will most likely have to leave my job as a software engineer as it's becoming overwhelming. So my question is, if you have had to leave your IT job, what was/is your new job.

Do you really need to leave IT just because of these symptoms? There are so many areas to work in.

Anyway, what illness are you talking about here? Boredom? Got stuck in a place where the project sucked the life and general interest out of you? OCD? Depression? Anxiety?

UPDATE: Got good answers about what can cause these symptoms.

If you want to leave IT then try to find jobs that are still challenging your creativity, but don't need huge amount of concentration in the same time. Like becoming a carpenter, professional gardener, etc...

These still make you use your creative side, but rely on more physical work then intellectual.

Lots of options actually. If you're healthy, able to concentrate on things for a long time and your brain is sharp then count your blessings.

I once (for only a few weeks, but it felt much longer) had to use medication that made my brain feel like mush, comprehension capabilities were a fraction of normal. Very humbling experience, scared to death of losing my faculties and ending up in that fog for some reason that can't be cured so easily.

I left for storytelling and film/tv. If anything, it's more taxing, so there's that.

Writing scripts itself is the most relaxing part of the job, it takes some concentration though.

Film and TV production is on a whole other level. Breaking down scripts for production schedule and framing everything within a budget and then talking to a lot of people where their job is to take your money and yours is to keep it. Then keeping track that everything is in order for production to take place and solving lots of last-minute crises, everything involving a lot of people. If it's a live TV type of situation or there's an oversight from larger production, stress gets amped up a lot. It's a busy hive, somewhat like an organised chaos where most of the work is handling people and being handled by people. That's production. Pre-production alone is, more or less, stress free process. That might be a direction to explore if you're art or organization oriented.