Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
What career should I pursue? I seem to lack the discipline or whatever for university or other such independant tasks. How much does having a good career matter for getting a good wife? I'm worried at the rate I'm going I'm running out of time.
Assortative mating is a real deal, so if you want to bag a wife you'll be proud of, then you need to work on yourself too, presuming your profile picture is you, unless you get really jacked you'll have to rely on something other than good looks carrying you (a problem I share, I'm just being honest here, not attempting to call you ugly, even just being plain means you need more in hand).
You're 26 years old, and don't have much in the way of qualifications. Well, I'm 26 years old, and despite "lacking the discipline" to pursue independent tasks, Ritalin proved to be a sufficient aid to get me through med school.
That is not a route I would recommend to anyone today (unless they're at just the right age to get in), because I think there's a very high chance you will be effectively obsolete and unemployable (for current wages) by the time you're done. This is true for most professions, not just medicine, not that you suggested you were inclined towards it.
IMO, you should aim for a career where minimal credentials and maximum selling your skills applies, programming is one that comes to mind, perhaps a trade if you're willing to go down that route. I would strongly advise against anything that needs a Bachelors, then a Masters and a PhD, you simply do not have the luxury of that much time (though being a student in a promising course is a good way to get a girl! At least you'll be in an environment where they're present, programming excepted).
You raised concerns of delaying having kids later being bad because of aging related degradation of your seminal genetic material, which honestly isn't that big a deal for men. The most pertinent reason to avoid delaying past your 40s is that you will likely just lack the energy to handle kids, even if that's not something that can't be overcome.
So my advise is, get into a Bachelors in whatever you think you have the aptitude for, perhaps consider a Masters if you don't find a well-paying job straight away, and use that time to expose yourself to women your age with the traits you desire.
The primary concern is the age of the mother. Maybe I could marry someone much younger, but that comes with its own set of issues, and the vast majority of women marry someone within only a few years of them anyway.
An age-gap of even ten years is utterly unremarkable, especially when it's, say, a 40 year old guy marrying a 30 yo woman. It's far from an intractable issue.
Yes, to be clear, I'm not some turbo doomer about this. But dating is hard enough already without adding on even more filters.
Dating will get easier when you're either a student in a promising profession, or someone employed making decent dough. At that point, being the kind of guy who wants a significantly younger wife becomes a far more tractable problem, easier the more money you have really.
So being a recent graduate is a bad time to date?
Bad? Compared to your entire life? Not at all.
But compared to either:
Being in schooling, where you have state-sanctioned proximity to young and attractive people of the other gender, very few people in your peer group having become so utterly superior to you in terms of credentials.
Being well-established in a career where you're gaining points for being wealthy/successful/put-together, in other words having said credentials.
It's a bit worse.
1 happens to be the biggest hurdle for the average person asking for relationship advice here, they're usually nerdy, shy or introverted, and often are in a stream where women are rare. But they usually get a big benefit from 2, where being successful makes them attractive again.
Being a recent graduate who just got a decent job, still has an active friends circle from college or uni and hasn't aged out of hangouts or events where the denizens of the latter exist is far from the worst place to be.
I'm somehow in the worst of all worlds. I'm nerdy, shy, and introverted and did a degree where there were very few women and I had almost no free time, have had very little career success since graduating, and am now no longer part of a social circle that involves going to parties or meeting new people after moving back to my hometown and now only hanging out with friends from high school and having not succeeded at making friends in university.
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I disagree, based on what I've seen happen with my classmates at a US medical school. And the residents. It only changes once you are an attending.
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AFAICT, it's the only thing that makes it more tractable.
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