Feeling financially left behind
I’m 25 years old. When my father was my age, I was already born. Many of my peers are working in careers relevant to what they went to school for. Some of them are buying houses or having children of their own.
Meanwhile, I’ve been bouncing from part-time job to part-time job. I celebrate paycheques of $200. I’m embarrassed to go out with my peers for fear of wandering into a situation where I’ll need to spend more money than I ought to.
The jobs I’ve worked have all either been temporary or low-paying with no prospects. It’s been difficult, to say the least, to feel like I’m building the foundations for a life.
While I’m on that topic, I’ve been thinking about what decisions I can make to better my position. The question for me isn’t “what opportunities exist?” but “what opportunities should I follow?”
Everything feels like a risk. Everything feels like it may not work out and I’ll end up back where I am now.
When I think like this, my mind always returns to my roots. I think about escaping the high-speed nature of the city and returning to the wide open spaces and simple logic of country living.
Thinking like this is comforting, but it doesn’t exactly feel useful.
The fact of the matter is that I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’m not sure what the future looks like.
I don’t know what decisions I’m going to make.
I don’t want to become a rich person. I don’t have huge material aspirations or goals for what some would call greatness. In the simplest of terms, I just want enough money to live comfortably. I don’t want to fear my bills. I want to know that I will certainly be able to pay for groceries. These are goals that I feel are reasonable and ought to be achievable.
This is part, I think, of why I feel so stressed about not having achieved it yet.
Some people would see this sort of situation as exciting. I see it, and I can’t help but feel like I’m being left behind.
