Ask Lemmy

Man, I remember when I was 23, good times! Yeah, gonna be real things like work, school, and all that productive stuff won't make you feel stable. I spent a lot of my time wondering about that phrase that happiness is what you make of it.

When I was like 19, I felt I had no path forward and my dumbass served 6 years in the US Army. I had a near death experience in Iraq when I got fucking blown up and you know what went through my head? Was it the incredible team meetings when I was an NCO, the great grades I had in school, the awesome days of work when I got a lot done? No, it was the time I spent with friends, getting so drunk I passed out in a field, going to gaming tournaments, bowling, and all that. So what's gonna matter in the end isn't going to be anythong 'productive' at all.

Work and school are oh so much fucking applesauce. And hell, making more friends does help with jobs. I got my job now, as a civilian, because of the friendships I made in the Army.

...I feel like I old man rambled. Yeah, get out there and make friends. Literally just talk to people. Out of nowhere. Hell yeah.

An important thing to note is that AI is actually not capable of replacing jobs. It can streamline some jobs in a limited capacity.

The perception that AI is replacing jobs is a lie that's spread by both employers and AI companies for various reasons.

The AI companies want to spread it because it makes their products look better to employers. It's just marketing for them.

Employers are claiming that AI is replacing jobs because they overhired during and after Covid lockdowns and the industry is correcting for the oversaturation now that the economy has gotten tighter. But layoffs from reduced profits looks really bad to shareholders, and the company wants to look good to keep the stock up. Because of thus, they're trying to spin the narrative that AI's increase in productivity let them reduce positions despite it not being true.

All that being said, the job market is tough. If you're good at math, engineering is usually a good pick. There's been a shortage of mechanical engineers in a lot of the US over the past decade. These are jobs that pay well, and if you're competent and willing to move you shouldn't have trouble finding a job. That being said, the areas with the biggest shortages tend to be rural, though they're often still within 1hr of a city.

The big catch for engineering is that school is damned hard. For my degree, I consistently needed 18-20 credit hours of classes each semester to finish in 4 years. Between that, studying, work, and hobbies that can be a difficult proposition. Plus, you still need to have soft skills like communication. You're going to have a harder time getting a job if you can't hold a conversation.

You're going to have to say more about the chronic illness for any career advice.

I thought having a government job was stable. I still have it but it's getting harder everyday. TR ru.p is fucking up a career i spent 10 years of my life on.

Meditation.

There was never any stability in the world, but in times such as these it becomes painfully apparent.

The only place of stability is within.

That ironically also leads to the highest stability without.

Some (possibly incomplete) thoughts:

I think stuff like urban planning and designing walkable environments would be cool, but I'm not sure if that's a viable path in 2027 and beyond.

So you have the option of looking outside the country? Because there are definitely countries (especially in Europe) who are doing a lot on that direction, that might offer something interesting. Also, tuition will be lower almost everywhere outside the US, so you don't put on nearly as much debt, for the case that it ends up being the "wrong" degree. Plus, your chronic health issues would likely be much better taken care of there.

I also used to be interested in programming, but ever since AI and mass layoffs hit the scene, I've become disillusioned and stopped pursuing that path.

Depending on your situation, you might still be able to learn programming and build your skill set by contributing to the open source works. With some luck, the AI bubble will burst and we'll be somewhat back to something normal again, where "normal" programmers will be needed.

Is staking your sense of stability on your career the wrong way to think about this?

Generally, you don't want all your eggs in one basket. Any one thing can break away. I had a job for quite a while which was great and a perfect source of stability, it even helped me through some really dark times. Then things changed and it's no longer a stability anchor. If I staked my entire stability on that, I would have been a goner. Try to find stability on friends, family (if feasible), hobbies, etc. Of course, that's much easier said than done, but that is generally the way you want to go.

Certainty is an illusion. You're looking for certainty in an uncertain universe, which is a red flag for anxiety disorders. Not diagnosing you, just a friendly notice.

You can't live your life from the past. Planning ahead and charting your course is important, but then you need to actually get your head back on your shoulders and live your life. Sometimes there is no optimal solution, and you need to choose the "least bad" option and hope for the best.

Give yourself a little credit; you made it this far. Trust yourself that you'll be able to pivot and survive, even if something goes wrong.

I've had severe Hyper-POTS for decades, and the most important skills I learnt was staying within my limits and adapting on the fly. What do you do if you have a flare at the office, what if you're eating lunch with coworkers, etc. You can't plan ahead for every contingency. Your condition will ambush you at the worst possible time, and you need to adapt.

If you ever need any POTS related advice, send me a DM. Happy to help or just vent. Also check out !chronicillness@lemmy.world

This is not a new problem, humans since the beginning of our species have had the same feeling. You'll persevere the way that unprepared and scared homosapiens have since the dawn of our species. Simmer down, you dont need to solve existence.

That's the neat part...

Yes staking your stability on your career is the wrong idea, I went through all of the stuff you are talking about too, I got the memo a little sooner because i was interested in graphic design and technology as careers since as long as I could make sense of the internet and so I've had a lot of time since 2020 to think about all of this.

The truth is, the world is complex but money is not, and money makes the world go round in this capitalist society. So your goal is to find what you can do that enables you to keep doing what you can do. I'm starting a business that allows me to do this so thst I can allow myself to do something different that also enables me more, it can be enabling either in resource collection or in money making basically, capital.

I used to be against businesses until I realized that the point of businesses is always to enable the community at every scale in every niche, so people being business owners is not synonymous with people being manipulative, its just that the same percentage of business people that are manipulative are the same amount of people who are not business owners that are manipulative, so it just seems like there's a lot because they have more influence basically.

I also went through a battery of interviews recently at different places for different things I'm good at before considering businesses and realized that most people are not going to know what someone who can do work for them looks like even if it hit them on the head, so evidently I have excellent ability to figure these things out even if it seems only baseline competant in my eyes.

Businesses are easier than you think, really don't need much to start out, I know of a forum called fastlane forum from mj demarco that has plenty of people testing ideas and talking about what worked and what didn't, some people start out with just a few thousand and basically just keep spamming that until they ended up with six figures after a few years.

And non profits I recently figured out do not require you to be a charity, it just has to be for public benefit. The only real difference besides some paperwork is that you don't get to sell assets in the end on top of what you pay yourself, which is ideally how a business should work anyways since you shouldn't be taking margin of the profits for yourself selfishly and instead be putting it back into the business so that it makes more money more faster for more people.

So don't be afraid to start doing something normal like refurbishing electronics but instead as a non profit where you will be able to take advantages of different accessibility to the same market of people along with better tax and networking advantages.

With thinking in terms of stable enabling, it becomes not about the money and about finding a way to live your life in a way that allows you to fall upwards.

If you figure it out let me know, I'm a recent grad who focused on tech and I can't get a job

I chose my career on a combination of a set of desires combined with wanting a decent paycheck. It worked out well for me.

I guess the best thing that you can do is target something and give yourself options if your primary goal doesn't work out. For instance, you seem to have a desire in urban site planning, which is something that a degree in civil engineering can help you get. You may be able to get into the field you want, or you can pivot to someone else in the industry. It is also common to use the degree in adjacent fields or even as a way to show you can deal with numbers without being scared.

Focus on your skills (what you know, what you are capable of doing et)

Do not take in student loans, period. Trust me im 40 with 300k in student loans still. Havent used my college degree in ten years since i left my degree profession to make more money.

Just keep practicing coding, learn how to use AI to take care of simple but tedious tasks. You'll be fine i was in the same spot as you at your age and now i make $100k, only regret sre the student loans. Should have just worked those four years instead.

For the time being, it's still relatively easy for US citizens to move to a prosperous society. If things continue on the current trajectory, then at a certain point waves of refugees will start flowing outward, and with nationalism on the rise globally it's likely to become more difficult on the medium- to long-term.

I got a union job and made the bed in my car nice and comfy

Don’t fret too much about having to pick a career now; I switched careers in my late 20’s so you’re not locked into what you pick at first. I did have a low paying internship for about a year beteeen full time jobs though so it was a sacrifice for that time.

In terms of debt, have you looked into financial aid yet? Given that you have a condition, that can likely help you. If you also go to a school within the state you’ve lived in, it will also be cheaper than being someone from out of state.