29 and don't have a career

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I seem to think there are people out there younger than me (29) maybe 22, 23, 24 or 25 who have already got their lives sorted and got a thriving career because they maybe went to university and finished and seem to think I'm an under-achiever as I never finished university or graduated due to stress of the work, I seem to feel I SHOULD really be at that stage by now and I don't have career like a businessman or someone like that. I want to write my own book but its taken me ages planning and re-planning and changing ideas about it and is frustrating.

Not everybody has a well-paying career. Even some NTs do menial jobs all their lives. My cousin is a rather outgoing NT, and she went to university when she was younger to study and train to be a policewoman, but she didn't really get on with it, and she did graduate but despite that, nobody took her on or even give her a chance to be trained up. She's 35 now and has a baby, and works part-time in a bakery.

So it doesn't make you a "loser".

I never had a "career" per se.

Unless you call a clerk a "career" job.

I'm 58.

I'm 30 and I don't have a career, or a job at the moment. Odds are I probably won't be able to have a career. Everyone's different.

Not everyone older than you has a career

Not everyone older than you has a job

At will employer

"Life" goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

Anyways I am 36. Got fired a lot of times. No job skills.

I don't have one either, and well come to think of it I really don't actually want one anyways.

i have one personally, but most of my friends don't. it honestly isn't really a pre-requisite to being successful at 29. having a work ethic, ambition and holding down a stable job are just fine, it doesn't have to necessarily be what you want to do forever.

I'm not even sure what a career is... a well paying job where you have a chance to go forward?

Yah, don't have that. Working part time and don't really have a chance to get promoted or anything with a job like this... not that I really care all that much about the idea of having a career, but a better pay and chances of it getting even more money would be nice.

I believe that the reason why i didn't have a great career is because i did go to uni and got a degree.
I got a degree in a Pro recording studio Sound Engineering, an area that there isn't any call for in the area that i live.

When i left for Uni, there was loads of jobs in banking. (the island that i live on is an off shore finance centre).
When i returned after the degree, the economy had taken a turn for the worse but also the island had been flooded
by well educated people from Poland, which included quiet a few who had experience in banking.

So the jobs in banking had gone.
When i left uni, like all students, i was in desperate need to pay off debt. I did find some work, but unfortunately
got involved with a crazy Jehovah Witness woman who ruined my life with slander. This really did ruin my reputation in the area that i live, as i live on a small island and slander spreads like wild fire or a cancer.

Luckily, my special interests are what i live for. Having special interests that are limitless, means that i can study and create forever whether i make money or not. Whether i make money or not isn't that important, as the special interests give me pleasure and sense of achievement. Does in essence make me happy, regardless as to whether anyone even knows. Making music makes me happy!

To be honest, haven worked in various careers over the years, i found the formal workplace extremely stressful and difficult. I think the only thing i really liked about working in a career, is the money that i earn't and this was simply because i could then buy the equipment that i wanted that allowed me to progress my special interest.

I guess having money so that i can travel around the world would also have been beneficial and useful, and being able to help other people start up their own businesses and become self sufficient as well as helping worthy causes
(as half the world does live below the poverty line... so more worthy causes than i could possibly imagine).

But apart from those things, i am not that fussed. Having a career isn't everything.
Having something that gives you happiness that is generally independent of people and other outside influences
is more rewarding and consistent in my opinion.

To be honest, i think that if i had the choice i would like to be completely self sufficient so that i didn't even need a job.
Although quiet unrealistic for the most part, especially in the area that i live, where real estate land / houses are extortionate. With 1 bed room house costing average of £400,000 plus.

There are some things you have to do, like make enough money to survive, unless you have family or other means to help you survive without making the money yourself. Other than that, there is nothing that you have to do or that you "should" do.

I feel like I got my foot in the door career wise but still at square one. I didn't get my first job until I was 23, I think, I'm 33 now and have been at my current job for 4 1/2 years, it's my first job that is actually relevant to my degree and studies but is entry level, I'm kind of clueless of how to advance though, I'm comfortable here even though it's low pay and the idea of competing with other techs and trying to sell myself is nerve wrecking, even if I succeed and then take on more responsibilities. I have a bad case of imposter syndrome too.

AFAIK I never had a career - I think it was just a job, though the employer tended to call it a career. I don't see what the fuss is about with careers, I'm not even quite sure what they are. I suppose it's one of those jobs where you're supposed to "advance" up the rungs of different posts, always working in the same field, but getting more and more responsibility and a bit more pay. I was happy enough to go up a rung or two, just to get me further away from potential redundancy and to get a bit more money, but I didn't fancy anything beyond that, as it sounded like the expectations would have been rather overwhelming, so I stayed put. I'd have been happier with no job as long as the money was coming in from somewhere. I never defined myself by my paid work, it was just a necessary evil, and I usually feel sorry for anybody who has to work for somebody else.

I suppose the conventional view is that you can't survive without money, so you have to find work to get that, and your working conditions and pay are better if you get into a posher job, and the most feasible way of doing that is to go for a "career" where you get some qualifications for a particular kind of work and then starting at the bottom you lick the boss' backside and gradually work your way up to something a bit more comfortable and less degrading. Maybe it's because I'm working class, but none of that stuff sounds like me at all, and I don't believe it works out for most of the people who try it. I think getting promotion is usually too hard, the opportunities to do so are too few and far between, and that most of the rat-racers end up wondering why they're still working harder than they ever wanted to and still not very comfortable after years of doing their best.

Apparently that paid-work definition of "career" is only one of a number of definitions, and I can relate a lot better to the one that's to do with the whole of a person's life. I suppose the more usual definition (i.e. the one I think the OP meant) presumes that the paid work IS the person's life. That sounds horrible to me, but I suppose some middle class people enjoy their jobs that much, so maybe for them it's not so bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career#Definitions

I'm 30 and I haven't had a job, let alone a career, my entire adult life.