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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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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