I don't know what to do with my life

Post Reply New Topic

(If this is long for you, jump to paragraph eight)

I am currently 22 years old and I don't know what to do with my life. I am unemployed, don't have friends not even on the internet and never had a girlfriend. Everything that I tried to do in my life never worked. Every time I tried to make a job application, both online and in real life, I got either ghosted or rejected, even with dozens of courses made, being able to speak 3 languages and with two volunteering experiences made in US.

Because of trauma, I struggle with depression and anxiety since I am 13 years old and over the time I got anti-social and socially anxious due to horrible experiences in the past. I try treatment since 2014 but it don't work.

Since I moved to a s**thole city due the 2008 crisis and being obliged to live together most of the time with a bully cousin at his house, I've been miserable since then, except in 2012 and 2013. I thankfully lost contact with my cousin since he went to college.

Since I graduated high school, I just get social contact with my family once a day in real life and since I graduated college, I just get social contact in some forums and sometimes.

Since the last year, my family is strugglig financially because my aunt scammed my grandmother and now my grandmother needs to sell her house to pay a part of the debt and my parents need to pay a lawyer to sue my aunt. Because of this, my parents are stressed all the time and the mood in my house is heavy.

I just want to get out from a hot, violent, corrupt, selfish, rude, dirty and loud country with scarce job opportunities, miserable wages and with almost no support from the government for people like me and go somewhere else where all these problems are the opposite and work in a job that is at least tolerable for me.

Examples of countries: Nordic countries, Ireland, Benelux region, Switzerland, Germany, South Korea and Japan.

The only thing I am hoping now is to receive a part of the money my mother promised me after selling my grandmother's house and use this money in an Italian citizenship. She told me it will took up to 5 years to sell the house.

In this time, I was thinking to workout to lose weight, learning some languages, including Italian, and pursuing my hobbies.

Should I follow my plan or do something else?

Lots of people your age don't know what to do with their lives, so don't sweat it.

"Chance favours the prepared." I have had several changes in career, and the skills were more transferrable than one might expect. Sometimes a trick from one job would solve a big problem at another, unrelated one. My policy was to always get a paycheck in my hand to live on, and one in my head as bonus education. When I stopped learning, I moved on, until around age 40 when I was forgetting old lessons as fast as I was learning new ones. My advice would be to learn to live cheaply and independently, and not have all your hopes waiting for other people to do things. Learning to use a bicycle well will keep you mobile, save you time, keep you fit, and cost very little. Get better at the things you are interested in that are things that some people get paid to do, not video games or obscure languages. Fixing storm damage is probably a growing profession.

I did all my bicycling in North America, where most experienced riders prefer the roads to the official bicycle facilities. The Netherlands have excellent bikeways, lots of company on them, and no hills, but there are very few places I consider unrideable. With a bike, you can find alternative paths that cars can't use. If you use a bike to find your home, shops, and work, they will all be within bike-commuting range, and you can do a much finer-grained search, being able to stop anywhere. Bicycling was both my sport and my daily transportation for decades, and on vacation, it took me from the sea to 3.000 m elevation. It is not just hard work - your body gets used to the daily ride and can keep it up for hours if need be, and it can be very interesting work. An experienced commuter can get from A to B on HALF the oxygen used by a beginner by thinking about strategic use of effort. I've even gotten work fixing other bikes from learning on mine.

In your city there may be consulates for various countries of languages you speak. You might find that they keep a list of translators that might be available for tourists from their countries. You might be able to get on a list or even find translation work through a temporary agency.

Sounds like you've already put more long-term planning into your life than I ever put into mine. I've usually just made decisions as they've come up, and only thought about the present and the next few weeks at most. Within that context I've known what to do with myself, more often than not. I'm sure some would say I've been reckless, but so far so good. I don't like the idea of being boxed in by too many pre-conceived long-term plans, and I don't think I'd be very good at making up such things. It's hard to know what the future is going to be like, and I've heard tales of (e.g.) students enrolling on a 3-year course to become skilled in a particular job that was in great demand at the time, only to find when they came out at the other end that things had changed and nobody wanted their services. But that's just my view. Being a relative drifter might not work for everybody.

^^ If I'd waited for infrastructure, I'd never have gotten anywhere. Quite a few guys rode high-wheelers to the Yukon gold rush. I won't write out a whole manual here, but I can help you choose worthwhile instructions. If you see anyone like yourself riding, you might ask them for advice. The basic plan is to learn to balance with the seat set low by coasting down a grassy hill. Then, learn to pedal, turn and brake, maybe in an empty parking lot, and get the seat up where it belongs for power. Then ride on progressively busier streets until you can handle anything but a busy, narrow road with no shoulders. The cheapest bikes are rideable, but hard to maintain. A medium-quality used bike is usually the best value. Get a good lock, too.
With a bike, you can easily cover 100 km per day, exploring new countries as a tourist for very little money. You can also ride away from a disaster even when cars are blocked.

My life didn't start to gel until 27, my BFF's life didn't start to gel until 31. Now at 50 we are comfortable (as one can be with GAD). I had a "mid life" crisis a few years ago and was "directionless" again, but those closest to me reminded me that things seem to fall into place for me (sufficiently). Some people have/need stability more than others. I financially support a family so stability is up there in priority but still I "wandered" (three "irrelevant" part-time jobs, very non-NT approach to a "serious" job search). It seems many ASD folks don't date, don't career, don't life the way we are expected to. It's hard to know when to trust our "process" (or lack thereof) and when to look for support and structure. My advice: find the balance of those two (I did more or less both times). Wishing you well.

P.S. - I live on almost flat land, but I see a ridiculous number of bikes that are really only suitable for downhill racing. The really expensive ones are not extremely heavy, but then are hard to park securely. Unless you will spend a lot of time off-road or on gravel, hard, narrow tires will save you time, and if you can't go around bumps, your knees provide suspension as necessary. Above 20 kph, a light bike seems to fly over obstacles.