Ask Lemmy

The first thing to consider is: can you afford the luxury of picking something you like?

In an ideal world we get the job we want, we have fun doing it, nice colleagues, etc.. This may not be true for you. You can pick a job you don't particularly like, if the job market seems good, use that to just afford living and go from there. That makes it somewhat easy, because you're no longer picking something that's "nice" you're optimizing working conditions: working times, union coverage, how long the education takes, vs. how much it pays. Maybe you find that working in a sewage plant or being a plumber isn't nice, but way better than doing a public facing customer service job. Or working your ass off in academia, 60 hours a week, with the reward of a wet handshake, a mention in a paper that's cited 5 times that your supervisor uses to boost their standing but not yours and a two year timer on job stability.

I can’t picture myself in 5/10 years from now and can’t even imagine what type of job I’d love, bc everything seems out fo reach and impossible, just like it felt when I was 20.

I’m afraid of wasting time bc of my age

Besides the job, what do you even want? And that question is hard and some people don't find the answer for decades, so don't stress over it. Sometimes it takes a decade of life experience to come to an "obvious" conclusion. The trick is that the ten years aren't "wasted", they are *necessary" to give you the context to understand what you want.

We are generally limited in the time we have, but it's only really urgent in three aspects: if you are terminally ill, you are becoming old or disabled and physically can't do certain things and family planning. If you know you want kids, make a plan for 10 years into the future. That's important because the requirements around kids are completely different than without. I don't think traveling with toddlers is smart, kids are expensive, they will eat your time and attention. If you want to get something bigger done, consider doing it before having kids, or your kids making you choose them instead of your "dream". Which can be bad, because you never ever want to think that you could have done X if only you didn't have kids. That's a regret that poisons a lot of things.

Anyway, YOU still have plenty of time. At least 10 years, probably 20, until you even have to start worrying about anything.

Do you care for art, people, technology, animals? Sitting on a couch? Sports? Cooking? Baking? Culture? Anything?

If nothing particular jumps at you, it's totally fine to browse e.g. movies, technology, memes, comics, music, literature, or to travel until you find something that strikes you. Like, do you even know what's out there? How are you supposed to pick something you like if you haven't seen anything?

Society throws a lot of things at you that you are supposed to care about and supposed to do, but you have to actually explore and decide if those things are actually for you, or if you just believe or do them because everyone you know does them or talks about them.

I recommend writing a diary or taking notes on this. Revisiting your old thoughts can be difficult and it's easier to organize your thoughts on paper.

Personally, I finished a technical education, worked in a few projects and even finished a few things I didn't like to test out what I didn't like and want to avoid. E.g. I worked in a city I didn't live in, commuted 3 hours one way every other weekend, lived in conditions I didn't like... It wasn't nice in the moment, but now I know what to avoid.

Final note: statistics say you are not alone. The opposite in fact, lots of young people go through the same issues. So maybe that's comforting, idk.