I may just be too old or what, but here’s how I do things:

• Don’t post political opinion with my name on it, unless it’s really certifiably not fringe (pro mental health, climate change is real, supporting LGBT rights … is stuff I can live with).
• Separate mail with separate account and nicknames for different things.
• Apply for a job? Don’t do it from iloveunicorns@xyz cause then I can just search where someone used that nickname …
• If you’re using GitHub and you use an alt there, make sure that’s not using the same alt as your random rants on Reddit.

Basically separate business stuff from your fringe opinions.

I think there’s value in asking not what interests you but rather how you want to work, particularly in your case. The ugly thing is that you don’t just find that knowledge on the kitchen counter one morning, you usually find out by working a job.

Disclaimer: I live in Europe, I am middle aged and I’ve worked in more than one profession and more than one country.

I think ideally you do some entry level thing, maybe without study if you’re worried about the expense, and you see what “how” suits you. Then you decide if you want to study or not but the aim is to expand the “how”.

Design or Architecture: This usually requires you or someone else to sell your skillset rather well. That someone else is difficult to find, so the question is: Are you cool with doing that? Are you happy to tell people just why your design is the best they can get? There’s niche jobs in this area as with many others, but in my experience not quite as many.

Tech: IT has for a long time served as a great market for people who did some sort of STEM-stuff. As a result of the size and growth of the industry in the past 50 years, people were much needed and earned rather well. This also means that cutting costs by reducing employee count looks rather attractive right now. But it’s also starting to backfire in many ways, be it the fact that AI runs wild in some cases or that in others companies just didn’t really know how much AI would cost them. There’s a lot of examples, but it’ll still take time to sink in that AI can do some stuff, but it can’t do all the stuff all the time, unless you’re fine losing control of your code. There’s also not a whole lot of regulation yet and that will absolutely change.

So here’s what I think you should ask yourself:

• Am I extroverted and happy to spend time with strangers? (This pays into sales jobs and promoter-stuff.)
• Am I someone who is good at disappointing people? (Regulation needs its own people, they often come highly specialised and their job is to tell others what’s safe to do, thus creating disappointment. Management is also a lot of eggshells to walk on, but it’s not always creating disappointment.)
• Am I passionate enough about a field to deeply invest and let it bleed into my life? (Sometimes there is something you absolutely must do and when you know that, it’s okay to embrace it.)
• How well do I work within a team? (Your first team may not be the best team ever, but if you can fit in without hating the situation, cut the others some slack and exist within that system, that’s a skill.)
• Am I someone who gets into that hyper focus kinda state where I just work alone for hours and that makes me happy? (This is going the science route, even IT relies on team work to a certain degree, but the more trial and error and writing a job involves, the more you need to be motivated on your own.)
• Am I a born service provider? (Some of us are not front row extroverts but really just want to make life better for everyone. In that case look at support or some job that cooperates with a team but does their own thing later on. We’re looking at assistant roles, documentation - where AI didn’t ruin it, UX … and as I said: Support.)
• Do I need pressure or stress to get things done? (Some of us do. That’s okay, but let’s then pick something that gives us deadlines or the right amount of pressure to actually perform. Or - if you’re on the other end of this - a place with long-term planning and very clear expectations, so you can settle into a routine.)

Many of these things are completely independent of the area you later work in, if you do the finances for a charity or work on organising funds raisers for start ups, if you end up as a scrum master with a dev team or an auditor for building sites, they are all different combinations of those things above. If you find the right combination, you find what you can do well and what will make you somewhat happy.

My personal advice: Pick something that comes to you with ease (meaning it’s something you don’t look at the clock about), life will find a way to make it challenging anyway.

Good luck!

That entirely depends on your perspective. I do what I think does good, when I’m able to.

So does everyone else.

I’ve got better things to do than survive.

(Just in case anyone gets this wrong: Survival alone is usually quite little to keep you happy, so it’s about going for the stuff you want and taking the risks you need to get there. Anytime I worry about making myself vulnerable, I tell myself this.)

People are generally convinced I’m vegetarian or vegan. I’m not.

Sometimes it takes them eating with me 3-4 times to realize “Wait, you eat meat??” … It’s strange, I seem to have a veggy vibe.

I’ll try and keep it universal.

Don’t do stocks short term, if you want to invest before having money, go for an ETF savings plan (some money every month into the same ETF) and maybe something your government co-funds.

You can buy stocks once it doesn’t hurt and you can hold them with no issues. But ETF are good and safe.

Find what comes easy to you, invest in that. You’re good with people? Great, so work with them. If you’re cool with having conflict with them, gain some knowledge in a field where they need you to say “No” professionally and reap the benefits (Auditors aren’t poor people, neither are managers). If you’re not a conflict person, maybe you enjoy Sales, if you fall in-between, project management may work for you. If you’re a technician go be a technician, you’ll always complain but never be poor and usually you’ll enjoy the complaining. Or maybe there’s a trade that you can really enjoy, that’s great too.

Important is that you don’t have to try hard to hit the basic goals every day, there should be some ease in what you do, cause you can’t always be at 100%.

Talking about 100%:

80% is enough. It’s fine to stretch for the ceiling, but keep in mind that it’s a stretch. It’s okay to not reach it, you’re not a worse person for it, you’re a better person for trying.

“Fake it, till you make it” works, but you have to be ready to make some mistakes. They happen to everyone, you’re not alone. And it also works if you want to be happier or wiser or just a little more fit. Just keep at it, if you occasionally drop the ball, pick it back up and keep going. Each time you pick it back up, you learned something new.

Last and most important:

You as a human being don’t need to do or be anything to be whole and complete and worthy of love. You’re fine just the way you are.

That doesn’t mean you should stop trying to be who you want to be, it just means that your value isn’t determined by money or business achievements. There’s joy in progression, go get what you want, just don’t measure your value by that.

My experience as a young woman was, that young men learned to be a different person, when not in front of their peers.

This was pretty universal where I grew up. I was surprised how men from (some, not all) other cultures were so comfortable showing each other that they cared about each other. That didn’t necessarily make them better allies to women, but sometimes it did.

None of this is good.

I’m a big fan of showing vulnerability, but it really is a journey to do this not just in relationships or with friends but go beyond that.

Good job on noticing that things can be better. Let’s make them so.

I work with people and I always try to help them be gentle with themselves. I’m incredibly bad at that … Baby steps are my endgame.

Be open and curious, don’t make stuff complicated, even if it seems to be complicated to you. Take challenges step by step. Don’t treat people differently for who they are. Show them vulnerability and how to come back from being hurt.

You always teach by example so if you can show them an open mind, they will learn that the world doesn’t generally harm you.

It’s true that life sometimes will, but the only way to live life to its fullest also includes getting hurt and being sad and finding the trust to get back out there anyway to do that thing you need to do.

Trading my “people always want to tell me what went wrong in their life”-superpower for excellent executive function. Pretty please.

Joined my guild. Most expressive person I ever met, 10/10 over the top, so I dealt with that myself. Turns out I like very cheesy, took me years to get used though.

If I had kids, I would take them seriously. Just because they’re kids doesn’t mean they don’t know how they feel or what they need.

It is to a certain degree. You don’t bring your love for milk shakes to your “business attire only” office job. You may love Hentai, but you’re not telling the person next to you during an opera visit. These are aspects of you that don’t match the occasion, so you skip that. Most people do this naturally, they don’t spend much thought on it.

Then there’s “masking” as used by neurodivergent people. That’s an entirely different matter. More info an that is over at neurodivergentinsights.

You’re not dangerous, so no you’d not be locked up. What you need is decent boundaries, not a response.

You’re entirely separate from your mom. It’s unlikely that there’s a chip, so the question is how you can enforce that separation in a sustainable (for you) way. A simple “I don’t agree” would probably help you feel less submissive without giving her grounds for more debate.

Guilt is a part of depression, it’s built right into how you stay passive and sad. But you’re not guilty, you’re just struggling and that is - ask anyone except maybe your mom - really just part of the human condition. 90% of western adults have a depressive episode at least once in their life (stats by a therapist I used to go to), so you’re in good company.

In addition ask yourself this: If you had kids, would you think they owed you in return for your support? As a parent it’s something I feel you opt into when you decide to make babies. You don’t just pop them out and then make demands for the years you had to change diapers or drive them to school.

What your mom thinks or not ultimately hasn’t more or less value than your own thoughts and opinions. Let it go and focus on you and how you can limit your exposure to her opinions.

I get teary eyed, but I rarely cry. “The penguin of my life” was my last big challenge, so mean. Great movie though.

And yes, at some point you really want Red to have his little piece of heaven.

I think I am more open for this since I’m older (40s), when I was young I would’ve never let myself be that open.

I think I’d like myself as another person, but am still properly critical of myself as me.