Lots of self-doubt, insecurity about future, etc

[FakeSympathy]

As a 28m, I am seeing my peers moving on with their lives. Finding their career job, being in a happy relationship, getting married, or having kids. I see how excited they are about where they are and how happy they look.

Meanwhile, I am working at a retail hating every minute of it, making just above min wage, and still living with my parents. I love them for being patient with me and hoping for me to move on with my life as well, but I just don't see the opportunity happening.

I do have an undergrad degree, which was supposed to get me in a data science field, but due to how weird the program was, and how the pandemic rid of my chance of finding an internship, I never had proper training/experience. This leads to me being ignored by recruiters, even the ones that are supposed to be "entry-level" and how training will be provided. I will continue to try to find a career job, but I don't fill out the application out of hope. It's more or less a monotonous part of the day, like brushing my teeth.

Playing games or any leisurely activities don't necessarily make me feel any better. They do provide a brief entertainment, but as soon as they are done I go back to doubting myself as to whether I can find meaning in life anymore. I don't quite put myself as being depressed or suicidal, because I don't have the courage to enter that stage or even off myself.

I used to be an outgoing, positive, talkative person to be around. But because how mundane and uneventful my life is, the only solution that I unconsciously found was to stop talking or keep it to a minimum during in-person meetings, and to cut contact with everyone. Now when I attend meetings or get-togethers I'm that quiet guy in the corner of the table. And I only go to mandatory ones. Because I am so distant, no one really hits me up for hiking trips, parties, or any fun group activities. I struggle to find a good relationship, whether romantic or camaraderie.

I keep thinking if I just had that "one thing or two" my life might be a lot better, but those things aren't happening. And even if they were to happen, I feel like I would be just as miserable

 

[Gordon_4]

Dude I've been married for nearer than not to ten years, I have two kids, a house and both the lady wife and I have stable jobs. Existential dread stalks us both for a variety of reasons. You're not alone in worrying about the future. We just worry about mostly different things.

 

[EvilRoy]

Best advice I can give you is wait for the wheel and try not to assume the outside appearance of your peers is indicative of them being in ideal situations of having achieved what they strive for. Its easy to think stuff is great for a person when you only see their outside face. We all have to put on a brave face for society but everyone has stress and fear in their personal life.

If you're feeling you won't be able to do much with your degree as it is then I'd really suggest a technical college - get a two year diploma for a similar/lower level area with decent employment stats and then use your degree to help you advance. My partner had to do something similar - years working in childcare with no options to apply her degree, so she hit the tech college we have locally and used her grades and degree as proof she deserved to get into a program known for almost guarantying employment for graduates. She hasn't gotten to a point where she can apply her degree, but that diploma is responsible making a significant dent in her student loans, especially compared to the childcare job.

 

[Worgen]

Are you in a place you can look for a new job? It seems like right now a lot of places are hiring and at least down here almost all are paying at least $15 an hour starting. This could be a really good time to at least move to a new job even if its not a career type job.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Best advice I can give you is wait for the wheel and try not to assume the outside appearance of your peers is indicative of them being in ideal situations of having achieved what they strive for. Its easy to think stuff is great for a person when you only see their outside face. We all have to put on a brave face for society but everyone has stress and fear in their personal life.

So much this.

If you're keeping track of people through social media especially that's poison for your mental health. People rarely show the bad parts of their lives, the parts they struggle with. It's easy to look at other people's lives and think that they're successful and that you're unsuccessful, but you have to realize that you're only seeing a curated image of that person's life and not what their life is actually like.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I caaaaaaaan relate. 28 as well, and this year has been an up and down shit show in terms of my mental health and hope for the future. It's a damn mess. I, unfortunately, have gotten bad enough that suicidal thoughts crept up and started to cloud my mind at several different points. It's a good thing I managed to get out of that before it was too late. However, I am still just as freaked out about the future as I was since the start of my mental health healing process.

Part of that healing process was realizing retail and the food industry were some of the biggest detriments to my mental well being, so I am handing in my resignation tomorrow and leaving retail behind me forever. I have no idea where my life is going to be moving forward, but I've made the clear determination that me trying to enjoy life and actually wanting to stay alive is more important than dealing with shit I shouldn't have to be subjected to.

I've let the world control the direction of my life for too long, so I am going to change it or die trying. At least that way I'll feel like I've really lived. If you can find a good therapist, I highly recommend it. I wouldn't be where I am now without the one I have. My heart goes out to you, and I hope you can pull yourself out of this as well

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I caaaaaaaan relate. 28 as well, and this year has been an up and down shit show in terms of my mental health and hope for the future. It's a damn mess. I, unfortunately, have gotten bad enough that suicidal thoughts crept up and started to cloud my mind at several different points. It's a good thing I managed to get out of that before it was too late. However, I am still just as freaked out about the future as I was since the start of my mental health healing process.

Part of that healing process was realizing retail and the food industry were some of the biggest detriments to my mental well being, so I am handing in my resignation tomorrow and leaving retail behind me forever. I have no idea where my life is going to be moving forward, but I've made the clear determination that me trying to enjoy life and actually wanting to stay alive is more important than dealing with shit I shouldn't have to be subjected to.

I've let the world control the direction of my life for too long, so I am going to change it or die trying. At least that way I'll feel like I've really lived. If you can find a good therapist, I highly recommend it. I wouldn't be where I am now without the one I have. My heart goes out to you, and I hope you can pull yourself out of this as well

Glad you're getting out of retail. I remember you had a similar thread a while back and the number 1 piece of advice that I and others gave you was getting out of retail in order to help your mental health.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Glad you're getting out of retail. I remember you had a similar thread a while back and the number 1 piece of advice that I and others gave you was getting out of retail in order to help your mental health.

I did have a thread like that, yeah. After going over so much of this stuff with my therapist, it became clear just how detrimental it was to me and my mental state. And I don't mean just cause retail sucks... I mean because of the way I am wired mentally and what level of support and structure I need to succeed in all forms. If me and my family knew what we knew now back then, we'd likely have never even let me set foot at a retail or food industry location for a job. I know I cannot go back to that for the sake of myself, so tomorrow is the day I leave it all behind for good

 

[Piscian]

I was still bagging groceries and getting carts in my 20s. My wife at the time dragged me by the ear to a MCSE course because she felt I had an aptitude for technology, but no drive. I immediately realized I love figuring out how things work and troubleshooting. I still dropped out and got a good paying job in tech support, then networking, then engineering and so on. It's been a long difficult road, full of heartache, but I make 6 figures and have a few bucks saved up at 39.

If I could give anyone advice about feeling lost sometimes you need to acknowledge that you have nothing to lose in putting yourself out there and just being embarrassing. Reaching out on social media to people and companies you want to work for, join a club, talk to people. Life rarely knocks on your door while you're sitting in your pajamas. "You have to know, Not Fear, That someday you are going to die. Until you know that and embrace that, You are Useless." - Tyler Durden

Everything good that's ever come to me in life has been through me being ridiculous and embarrassing myself. I can't count the number of people who have told me they were attracted to me or wanted to hangout with me because they saw my hilarious crash and burn at soccer or terrible dancing at a bar. People want to be around other people who are having a good time regardless of how it makes them look. A good life often requires a good amount of fucking up. Honestly I wish I understood that sooner and fucked up more. I'd be making twice what I make now if I had asked for more instead of sitting in NOC support for 5 years because I was content.

I can't purport to compare my journey, but I do think there's a media idealization of life that often locks people into feeling that happiness is a thing thats all 1s and 0s and that there's some right way to live or that some people are destined for good things. I think it's really fucked up the last couple generations ability to define their own happiness. You gotta learn to ignore everything going on in your head and just search your feelings for what you want to do and go do it.

 

[Xprimentyl]

As a 28m, I am seeing my peers moving on with their lives. Finding their career job, being in a happy relationship, getting married, or having kids. I see how excited they are about where they are and how happy they look.

Meanwhile, I am working at a retail hating every minute of it, making just above min wage, and still living with my parents. I love them for being patient with me and hoping for me to move on with my life as well, but I just don't see the opportunity happening.

I do have an undergrad degree, which was supposed to get me in a data science field, but due to how weird the program was, and how the pandemic rid of my chance of finding an internship, I never had proper training/experience. This leads to me being ignored by recruiters, even the ones that are supposed to be "entry-level" and how training will be provided. I will continue to try to find a career job, but I don't fill out the application out of hope. It's more or less a monotonous part of the day, like brushing my teeth.

Playing games or any leisurely activities don't necessarily make me feel any better. They do provide a brief entertainment, but as soon as they are done I go back to doubting myself as to whether I can find meaning in life anymore. I don't quite put myself as being depressed or suicidal, because I don't have the courage to enter that stage or even off myself.

I used to be an outgoing, positive, talkative person to be around. But because how mundane and uneventful my life is, the only solution that I unconsciously found was to stop talking or keep it to a minimum during in-person meetings, and to cut contact with everyone. Now when I attend meetings or get-togethers I'm that quiet guy in the corner of the table. And I only go to mandatory ones. Because I am so distant, no one really hits me up for hiking trips, parties, or any fun group activities. I struggle to find a good relationship, whether romantic or camaraderie.

I keep thinking if I just had that "one thing or two" my life might be a lot better, but those things aren't happening. And even if they were to happen, I feel like I would be just as miserable

28 is way too young for an existential/midlife crisis. I'm 41, and still waiting on mine.

That said, life is something we each have to figure out. No one has it as together as they seem from the outside looking in. There's no "right" way to live life barring hurting other people. Myself? 41 creeped up on me, and there's a lot I regret not having done by now. I've got the aches and pains of age. No children as I'd always assumed I would by now. I haven't traveled much; never been out of the continental US outside of a couple hours spent in Tijuana when I was 11. But I've done a lot of other stuff and settled into my skin, and my satisfaction with "me" far outweighs the "coulda/woulda/shoulda" I could ruminate over.

With maturity comes the understanding that life experiences don't have a time stamp. Life is day-to-day. Relationships have gotten more precious and my circle has shrunk to a very few, and I've come to appreciate that a lot of cursory friends is vastly less worthy than a few deep friends.

I've been in retail for almost 20 years now in various capacities. Know now that it is rarely a rewarding industry if you're seeking meaning and purpose. No one understands why I hate the holidays so much; I correlate them to stress, expense and inconvenience. Do not settle. Take your experience and knowledge and find something that makes you less miserable. I'm too cynical to say find something that makes you happy; pretty sure those careers don't exist AND pay substantial dividends... unless you wanna go into prostitution as a gigolo for lonely, wealthy and attractive people, and I'm pretty sure that trifecta is more the exception than the norm.

Chin up, friend. We're all struggling out here, and most of us have no idea what we're doing.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

In my mid 20s I decided heroin would be a good idea. A decade later I came to the conclusion it wasn't such a great plan after all. Even after stopping it took years for my brain to realise that the time had washed a lot away and that I needed to do something about it. Those things you just develop naturally, interests, friends, social skills, you realise you have to develop those all over again and this time you have to put in some conscious effort, it's work, you have to do something, it won't just happen.

Anyway, I think my point is, I think it sounds like you have a similar feeling to what I had. Just empty and existing and not sure where to go, how to get there and feeling it's too late even if you did know what to do. But I will say that if the shattered shell in his late 30s can sort it out you can too.

Think, act, try different things. If you end up not liking what you do then it's one thing to cross off the list to narrow down to things that do work for you.
There are a lot of people out there who can put it in a far more coherent way than me. You can't swing a cat these days without hitting someone giving out life advice, and while they won't fix your shit for you, usually they can at least point you in the right direction.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Glad you're getting out of retail. I remember you had a similar thread a while back and the number 1 piece of advice that I and others gave you was getting out of retail in order to help your mental health.

Yep. As someone who spent ten years in retail employment (and four in the service industry), I can tell you that they are very well-constructed to crush the humanity out of the lowest-rung employees and grind them into "happy employee bots" who don't complain about abuse or mistreatment. (Of course, the second part seldom happens, so the system settles for the first part.)

28 is way too young for an existential/midlife crisis. I'm 41, and still waiting on mine.

That's about the time I had mine, so you might just be a bit behind schedule.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I would hope being with your folks isn’t enabling your current situation. This strangely reminds me of the movie Freddy Got Fingered in a way; especially considering the age.

“I’m a twenty eight year old man dad, I think I can eat a chicken sandwich.”

Seriously though, it can really suck feeling aimless in a society where opportunities are even now in pretty fucked up times still better than most places. Maybe that’s part of the problem is too much stimulation scrambles the brain a bit and makes it difficult to process and filter through effectively. For me personally it can be an overload that ends up having the opposite intended effect.

If you’re looking for a spark, something like a quick “self help motivation” search on youtube might be enough to grease the wheels a bit, but it takes personal introspection to decide what to do with any advice before it means anything. Avoid dwelling on the bigger end game picture, comparing life with anyone else’s or worrying about what you can’t control because all anyone can do is choose how to react to our environments and conditions. Your advantages would seem to be having few obligations and time to dedicate to improving yourself. Word of warning, it generally doesn’t get easier as you get older, so the sooner you can start the better.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I'm also pushing 30 and been thinking about the future a bit lately. Mainly I've been wondering if I'm going to regret it if I don't have kids. Part of me would kind of like to have a kid someday, but the rest of me is really comfortable where I am. My last date/relationship was in high school, lasted 3 years, and the termination of it nearly destroyed me. It took me years to piece my life back together, and I just can't imagine going through that again. I wouldn't even begin knowing where to look for someone compatible with my personality who would live up to my ridiculous standards. It feels like dating would be a complete second job and there's no guarantee that you won't end up hating each other 5 years down the road and end up having an emotionally and financially ruinous divorce. It all just seems like so much work with no guarantee of eventual happiness, with a certain increase in heartache, misery, and conflict. If there were some computer that looked over the whole of the human race and found my perfect match I wouldn't be opposed, but needing to do it myself doesn't even feel worth the bother.

Also I hate working and have been saving nearly all my money for early retirement by living with my dad and living extremely frugally. A wife and kids would necessitate a major change on that front and I'd be lucky if I could retire before 60.

Every time I weigh this out the cons vastly outweigh the pros, but the few pros that there come into my thoughts juust frequently enough to make me worry that I might regret them once I'm too old. It feels like my entire personality is pulling me in one direction, but that one last strand of hardwired reproductive urge is just holding out enough to make me doubt. Like, what about when I'm old and would like to have children/grandchildren to take care of me? But how can I change my entire life around to satisfy something I only kind of, sort of want? Especially when I hate change. It's quite frustrating.

 

[Gordon_4]

In my mid 20s I decided heroin would be a good idea. A decade later I came to the conclusion it wasn't such a great plan after all

Ten years on the Horse is a fuckin' rough go I wouldn't wish on anyone. You did well to get yourself off that shit.

 

[Xprimentyl]

In my mid 20s I decided heroin would be a good idea. A decade later I came to the conclusion it wasn't such a great plan after all. Even after stopping it took years for my brain to realise that the time had washed a lot away and that I needed to do something about it. Those things you just develop naturally, interests, friends, social skills, you realise you have to develop those all over again and this time you have to put in some conscious effort, it's work, you have to do something, it won't just happen.

Anyway, I think my point is, I think it sounds like you have a similar feeling to what I had. Just empty and existing and not sure where to go, how to get there and feeling it's too late even if you did know what to do. But I will say that if the shattered shell in his late 30s can sort it out you can too.

Think, act, try different things. If you end up not liking what you do then it's one thing to cross off the list to narrow down to things that do work for you.
There are a lot of people out there who can put it in a far more coherent way than me. You can't swing a cat these days without hitting someone giving out life advice, and while they won't fix your shit for you, usually they can at least point you in the right direction.

That's an amazing admission to make, and I'm glad you were able to turn it around. I've seen drugs destroy a lot of lives, and anyone able to bounce back and right the ship is deserving of high praise. It always reminds me of how weak we are, then how strong we can be. I'm told life looks so much better when you come out the other side, but so thankful I never had to experience it myself. Congratulations.

 

[Crystal Violet]

I send you hugs and good vibes, friend. I say "friend" because we have never met but we are all so very similar at our core even when our lives are different. It is our generation. I do not know what are your personal circumstance but there is some very good advice in here. Please consider them and not feel trapped by your situation

 

[AnxietyProne]

Look around you.

We live in a world where sincerity is considered a sin and the ultimate goal in life is to just make people mad enough for them to be considered |"triggered."

When the most powerful man in the world bragged about doing this, that was the Silent Hill air raid siren that should tell you that we are in the dark world, and we're never coming out.

You would be insane NOT to have an existential crisis right now.

 

[Gergar12]

Even if you have a good life financially if you're young climate change is still coming.

 

[Vault101]

I can relate. I used to feel this way. My way of breaking out of it was...well getting a degree which actually worked out for me. Unfortunately for a lot of people it doesn't always work out (immediately) the way its "supposed" to but its not anyone's fault. You're not a failure. It's just capitalism. As someone else said looking at the barriers preventing you from getting a job is somewhere to start weather than means getting extra certs or finding a way to get that experience.

Also getting some kind of active hobby might be good? I know its pretty standard lame advice and not going to magically solve your problems but if you find something you like weather that's writing, drawing, coding, HACKING (legally of course) it gives you something stimulating that isn't dependent on outside factors like a job or the pressure to make money.

I keep thinking if I just had that "one thing or two" my life might be a lot better, but those things aren't happening. And even if they were to happen, I feel like I would be just as miserable

There could also be underlying issues with depression as well. I know its hard in the US (well its hard everywhere) but talking to a therapist or someone about it might be a good idea.

Also as everyone had said there's no set path for someones life to be on. Only you know what life you want to have. People with those "good jobs" might also be overworked and stressed, some peoples relationships are mundane and their kids are a drain. That said I also don't want to dismiss personal circumstance which absolutely can make a huge difference. If you're unhappy its a clear sign things need to change. Also please don't rush too hard into a relationship. Its exciting I know but the more invested you are too early the less likely you are to spot red flags and listen to your intuition (I am of course speaking from personal experience here)