The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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Make sure you're not doing these things just to please other people. Think hard about what YOU are getting out of what you're doing and if it's not making you happy then think of something else that will make you happy and do that instead. You should also try to see the positives in the things you're doing, for example I used to feel like the work I did was bad and it made no difference but then I started to realize that my work is actually making a positive impact on people and it can help them lead happier lives and it made me respect myself and my work and the people around me a lot more. If you are alienated from society try to reach out and just be kind to people and talk to people more and stop isolating yourself as much.
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Selection bias. You only notice the socially refined peers, you won't see the ones who are failing out because they get nervous at the idea of making a phone call.
If you want to relate to your peers then ask them what motivates them and talk about it, and maybe discuss/explore how it doesn't motivate you. You're not obliged to agree with them.
Finish out the master's degree while thoroughly researching which branch and role of the military suits your aims (air force seems like the comfiest option to my untrained eyes). Talk to currently serving members before you even consider talking to the recruitment office. Sign up, travel the country/world (avoid front line combat), learn marketable skills within a clear hierarchy and away from the general public (about as far from an office job as you can reasonably get), get a solid reference from doing something generally held in good esteem by society, make friends and contacts, save your pay, leave ~30 with a good CV and much improved prospects. Also women like a man in uniform. If you don't like it you're still only 30 and you've got a decent foundation to pivot on. Reading Ancient Greek is cool but it's a luxury pursuit.
If you don't like that then you could learn to code and try to land a WFH/remote job, and if you don't like that then you need to start looking for a lucrative niche or building a business from scratch. Otherwise it's the office life for you. I'm guessing you don't like sales, see academia as an up-hill dead end and aren't about to retrain as a doctor or hit the jackpot as a YouTuber or a Substack writer.
Forget about "the best years are gone". Concentrate on setting yourself straight in the medium term so that when you do figure it out in your "still pretty good, maybe on reflection arguably better years" you're able to pursue it and achieve it instead of being stuck even deeper in a hole. Remember that you will turn 30 whatever happens, so you might as well look forward to doing something worthwhile before you find yourself looking back and wondering what you could have done.
It's corny but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria is a good way of planning your actions, you just need to make sure your scope is appropriate. You have to keep a good balance of short term plans to stay motivated by steadily ticking them off otherwise it can feel like the end goal is too far away.
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that is not too bad. still got plenty of time to get things together. much better than being 35 in your situation, which is not all that uncommon
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Try church, if you know ancient greek then Christian Orthodoxy should be a breeze.
Alternatively go on an app like meetup. Throw yourself at random groups until you find people/things you're interested in. It will be painful at first but there's no way to get social experience other than socializing.
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What led to you isolating yourself?
As for the way out and relating to peers - I suggest looking for a good volunteering opportunity. People in those kinds of groups will be a lot more amenable to getting along with you, because you have similar interests and values in terms of what you volunteer to do. You'll get more of an in-group that you belong to in that setting.
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You've said you're doing a Master's, so I presume you've just started term. It might be helpful to join 2-3 societies (including both something you've got experience in and something you've not done before). Although the sense of alienation will likely be there in the short term, in the medium term your shared interests should mean that you gradually bond- if you put in some effort and go to socials etc.
Another angle- look for people who are at a more similar stage in life to you or have a similar outlook. I think there's a bit of an illusion that everyone at that age is into similar activities- primarily drinking, clubbing, and posting on social media. There will however be a significant minority not into these things that are by nature more difficult to find. Often they converge in "nerdy" societies or optional additional classes - the difficulty being the attendant frequency in such societies of those whom you wouldn't want to be friends with in the first place. Another option is looking for your "graduate"-type student union, where there is a higher proportion of people who are older and therefore more likely to be relatable.
On the future- not much to say really! If you like money, I wouldn't knock an office job too much: regardless of degree or experience to date, you could do a law conversion course or go into accountancy or consultancy, all of which are established and potentially well-paying career paths which can be intellectually interesting on the day to day. I don't know what either of your degrees are in, so there may be further options. It's probably worth exploring what you want from a job, in terms of pay/hours/conditions/intellectual stimulation (possibly with your uni's careers advisors) and going from there.
Having said that, there's no real requirement to start work immediately after graduating. Indeed, a number of my peers were out of work for a year or so and then landed good jobs when they started actually applying. You could acquire capital over (say) 3 months and then either travel abroad or look for opportunities in your country for bed-and-board volunteering opportunities. These would have the virtue of not being office jobs (so you can see if you like it) and also immersing you in socialising with people who are not your kin. Hostels and small-scale farms spring to mind as typical opportunities of this kind.
I've gone on too long, so key takeaways: life does not end at 25; lots of people are only just entering their careers/ finding partners at 30+; push yourself to spend more time with other people and less time browsing and it will gradually become easier.
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