Hey there

If it helps, I'm 21 and I still have no idea what I'm going to do with my life, or even if I'm going to keep on living it.

Resources go into all of us. As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. We don't have to be self-sufficient. That's the point of society as we know it, enabling us to co-operate and accomplish much more than we would alone.

Honestly, don't feel bad about not producing results. I've been committed to psych wards twice. During these stays, I didn't have to pay for anything. Food, the building and it's maintenance, staff, medications, immediate access to a psychiatrist, various counselors, GPs, therapists, etc. and it was all on the taxpayers' dime.

I had that feeling of the cliff, too, though I saw it more like the sky was about to fall on me. But for real, you don't have to figure out your entire life. Everybody is going to be telling you that you need to be responsible, and you need to go to university, and you need to get a high paying and respectable career, and you need to get a spouse, and you need to get an apartment and then you need to buy a house, and you need to have kids, and you need to spend the next 40 years paying for it, and then you will be HAPPY.

Bullshit. All of it.

Happiness is a state of mind, not an accomplishment. If it takes you an extra year, or an extra decade, or an extra god damn lifetime to figure your shit out, so be it. Working your ass off to meet the expectations of other people will get you raises and promotions and it will leave you feeling empty as fuck unless you actually care about what you're doing.

I, as a dropout, was supervising (and getting paid more) than people with university degrees. They worked because, well, you're supposed to have a job, right? I worked because I wanted to play music, and I needed the money for guitars and rent. You don't have to be passionate about your job, as long as you're passionate about something. For me, it's music. I work, yeah, but the work is a means to an end. The work is just what I do so that I can play music without being homeless.

Staying inside all the time isn't the healthiest. That's coming from a dropout, an addict, a guy who's spent the last 5 years actively messing up his life. I'm not the boss of you, and my advice is only based on what I've learned from the continual mistake that is my life. I say, try to get outside, but if you don't, whatever.

If you wanna dick around online, go for it. The internet is an incredible place. It doesn't cut it as a substitute for real life, but as a supplement to reality, an adjunct, it's great. I spend too much time online, and god damn I love it.

Failure and success are just ideas, man. Just words. Just labels that other people put on behaviour. To me, success is working part time and playing a lot of guitar. To me, I'm already succeeding. I've already made it. To some people, that's pathetic. But those people are not me, and they don't get to decide how I'm going to live my life.

Just do what you gotta do, man. If anyone's disappointed in you for that, tell 'em to fuck right off. The song Slob by Weezer pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter, I recommend it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52_XiKxZ1K4

Good luck with your shit, I hope you can figure things out

/r/depression Thread