Im 34 and Still Dont Know What to Do With My Life

April 06, 2022 Post a Comment

Dear Fran,

I decided to write subsequently another long solar day where I left piece of work feeling depleted and questioning why I'm even getting out of bed in the morning.

Suffice it to say, I practice non similar where my life is, and I cannot find a manner out.

To give you some back-story, I was put in a position in my freshman year of college where I had to choose my major and my eventual line of piece of work. I was 20 and had no idea what I wanted to do, so I decided on video game development because it was a big hobby. Five years and ii degrees afterward (BA and a MS), I'm in that field and don't want to be hither. I'm stuck behind a desk, work absurd hours, don't find my chore fulfilling, and proceed seeing depressing similarities between myself and Edward Norton'southward grapheme in Fight Club.

Worse still, I have no idea what my "passion" is and can't find it.

I've taken personality tests (INTJ 5 years running!), career finder tests (which tell me I should be either an artist or a pharmacist; go figure), tried almost every "find your passion" exercise on the internet, consulted friends, and I can never go a single, unified response.

I don't know where to plow. To that cease, I'd similar to enlist your help and see if your fresh set of eyes can see a pattern in some of the hobbies and personality traits I'll list below.

I like to write, but can never seem to finish a project because I go on shifting between novel, brusque story, screenplay, comic, and other genres. This has been a hobby since childhood, but the inability to finish stories started around college.

I like to draw (on paper or the figurer), only get discouraged because I can never get my drawings to expect how I see them in my caput. I've been sketching and cartoon since babyhood, but it'southward never been a serious pursuit.

I love animals just accept never been able to get my ain because I spend too much time at work.

I love to learn and would have stayed in higher for at least ii or 3 more than degrees if I could have afforded information technology.

I'chiliad super organized and efficient. (Skills that benefit me in my game dev management work.)

Working behind a desk (and in a standard 9-to-five) saps my will to live.

I've worked as a (seasonal) player in a theme park'south Halloween event and loved information technology.

My tastes can be extremely varied. I get an equal amount of enjoyment from going to the symphony and a roller derby lucifer, for example.

I accept no idea what I'd practice if money was no object.

I'm naturally artistic, only I tin't focus it to a unmarried medium. Interior design and architecture interest me greatly, but and so does digital painting, sculpting, and building with Legos.

I could keep going, just I'm sure you can appreciate my frustration. I don't know what I want, but I do know what I have now isn't it.

Whatever advice you can provide, no matter how pocket-size, would be appreciated.

Regards,

Dislocated

Dearest Confused,

Interesting alphabetic character. You audio like an intelligent, creative, and accomplished person, and let me assure you that yous have plenty of time to discover your "passion." In fact, my start piece of advice to you is that you try to accept that y'all accept many "passions," not just one. This is a good thing, not a bad one. In fact, you remind me of myself. As a young person, I as well loved to draw, write, play the piano, and act, and felt frustrated and confused a lot of the time well-nigh which of these interests I wanted to pursue.

Now it sounds to me as if you're supporting yourself with your job as a video game designer. And so, for right now I retrieve you should stop taking personality tests and career tests and "find your passion" tests, stop looking for unified patterns in all the talents and interests you have, and, nigh chiefly, stop consulting your friends.

Think well-nigh it. For 1 thing, how would your friends know what yous should do with your life? This may sound like a foreign statement coming from an advice columnist, only remember: Communication is cheap. It's inexpensive considering the person giving it doesn't take to alive with the consequences of the communication—you lot exercise. And the person giving the advice may not be able to separate his or her own talents, interests, and biases from the advice he or she is giving you.

Instead, I think you should notice your passion by getting into a "process" rather than worrying well-nigh an outcome. Hither's what I mean. Choose one creative endeavor at a time, and pursue each ane by getting into the process of pursuing it.

For example, allow's say y'all make up one's mind yous want to pursue writing. (Disclaimer: I'm choosing that because that happens to be my passion.) Yous could:

Sign upwardly for a dark course in creative writing, the short story, novel writing, or personal essay writing. Nearly community colleges offer these kinds of courses—and they're oft quite good. I've taught them myself.

Start a blog and stick with it.

Read a volume on writing, such every bit Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, or Julia Cameron'due south The Artist's Way, and actually do the exercises the author suggests. Or effort a book on writing prompts, similar Bryan Cohen'due south m Artistic Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories, and More.

Read a basic textbook on the "craft" of writing. 1 serious one on "fiction writing" that I like is Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft.

Come to my web log, The Bruised Muse, where y'all can as well find some writing exercises. Practice them, too.

Start a new story without regard for how it's going to end. Just explore. Do you retrieve writing is easy, and that writers learn to write hands and without pain, and go far at the task of writing consummate with the ability to finish everything they write? No way. My goodness, I published three novels, but I have iii more sitting on a shelf that I couldn't stop. I don't even want to tell you how many brusque stories I've written that I couldn't stop or ended upward not liking!

The bespeak is to just get started on something and meet where it takes you lot. Call up: Any creative endeavor is a procedure, not an event. If y'all're focused on the outcome, you're not in the process. In fact, if you're focused on the issue, on fright of rejection, or on the adulation yous hope to become at the finish, your artistic muse may very well rebel and only close downwards on you.

Just once you get into a process in one "passion," you may find yourself figuring out ways to incorporate some other of your "passions" so that yous can exercise something really spectacular. I think of a woman who came to one of my creative writing workshops at one point, and now she's making documentary films.

Another thought I accept is that maybe, since you seem to exist doing so well in game evolution, you can come upwardly with an idea for your ain business in that arena and become the entrepreneurial road, which is its ain creative try.

Now, I'd like to spend little time on some of the words y'all've used. I am firmly of the opinion that creativity itself is healing and that any creative undertaking you embark upon will be healing. I am, however, somewhat worried that you lot use words like "depleted" and "having trouble getting out of bed." You might want to talk about these feelings with a therapist, simply in any case, I would encourage yous at the aforementioned time to pursue your creative endeavor.

I wish you the best,

Fran