[faithbw]

Lately, I have been having this tug of war inside myself. On the one hand, I know I need to feel good about myself and appreciate myself. My head says I'm unique and have something to offer society. However, I look at my life thus far and I just feel like such a failure.

I'm in my late twenties and I just got divorced. I remember how the teenage me envisioned myself at this point in my life and I am so far from that. I'm divorced, unemployed, and just generally lonely. I've been told all my life that I am smart. I got good grades in school and graduated magna cum laude from a good university. I guess I thought doing well academically would set me up for a good life. Yet, here I am, almost thirty and feeling so uncertain about everything. I thought I would have a career by now. I thought I would be in a happy marriage and getting ready to have children. I thought I would live in a nice neighborhood with a nice house and be surrounded by people with the same interests as me.

While I did well in school, what I studied apparently didn't prepare me for anything more than doing administrative work. I often feel that I could have done that without going to college and accruing all this debt. People often say that a college degree show you have critical thinking skills which impresses employers but now I feel that all the people who say that are full of crap.

So I'm pursuing a Master's degree in Library Science. I thought this would finally get me on track. I love books, information and libraries. Being a reference librarian is something I could see myself doing. Plus, I read about all the supposed openings that would be coming because of all the baby boomer librarians retiring. However, not too long after starting the program, I started to read on various library blogs how the librarian shortage is hoax and how hard it is for graduates to find full time positions with a living wage or even any position at all. I've talked to young librarians who confirm this. Now I seriously wonder if I should continue this degree. More importantly, I wonder what I will do if I don't continue.

I just want to be successful and yet it seems that everything I do leads to failure: getting a degree in the wrong major, getting married too young and not knowing enough about my now ex-husband, picking a useless Master's degree. On the one hand, I feel like I did what I was suppose to (education and marriage) but because I never do it "right" it blows up in my face anyway.

I look at my friends from high school and even college and everyone seems to be doing so much better than me. What did I do wrong?

[Jan1212]

Well try not to compare yourself to your friends from high school, a lot of people make themselves look good, stop reading about blogs that negatively impact your emotions. Things can change a lot in a few years and these days you have to be flexible but it also comes with uncertainty for the future. You are not alone, everyone go through problems and many don't like to show it

I don't think the American dream was close to being true, a lot of people were made to believe an ideal life is living like the Brady Bunch. I'm pretty sure there were a lot of chaos inside their white-picket fenced perfect family house

[NuckingFutz]

Wow! You sound like me when I was 30! I could relate to your post. But there are a lot of things that I think you have discounted about your experience in life so far:

1 - as far as marriage goes, you learned to move on instead of being stuck in marriage that was not good.

2 - you are in college which in itself is a big accomplishment. You have also learned what the market for your degree is in before you graduated. I think that library science is a wonderful basis to start your career with. This gives you an opportunity to think outside the box... maybe you can apply your skills in related career. I've even seen some people who went into career fields that didn't have anything to do with their major (an agriculture degree and went to work for IBM). You can also market yourself to places like museums (they have libraries within their own infrastructure. The possibilities are endless.

- I know you have wanted a family and a nice house. A good dream. There is no reason that you cannot have that. You are 30, I know people that didn't start their families until they were in their 40's. As for the house, use your degree to get a well paying job and buy your own house.

-Never discount the possibility that Mr. Right just hasn't come along yet. Sometimes love finds you! Give it a chance.

As far as tone of your post (and the part I can relate too), it seems that no matter how you look at something, it gets filtered through the grey cloud/screen of depression, so by the time the awareness gets to us, it's negative. Perhaps you could step back and see if that is what is going on with you right now. Maybe it is your depression distorting reality in a dark way. Maybe you will discover that with a few adjustments (if you are on meds, maybe check with your pdoc to see if they are working or not). Perhaps you need some therapy to see the distorted ways we sometimes think and what we could do about them.

I think you have a lot going for you. I know you cannot see this right now, but be loving and forgiving to yourself, especially when you see everything as a failure. I can see by just reading your post, that you already have a lot going for you as well as your ambition.

I think it's also important to stay in the moment so you can appreciate the small accomplishments too. Why? Because it's important to realize you are living life... enjoy the lunch you have with your friends, realize that life is a journey, not a destination. We are human beings, not human doings.

Life is a classroom, we are it's students and it's teachers.

Stop looking for reasons why your life seems so negative, and look for reasons why it is positive. I was looking at a post this morning and it was about the good things in your day, asking, what was good in your day. And I am sitting here at 8:00 am and the first thought that came out of my head was I woke up. What I did there was realize that I get another day of living life.

Sometimes we think we are more in control of our lives than perhaps we really are. We work so hard to fight was is going on around us instead of trusting that perhaps what will happen, is better than what we planned! I find that happening in my life a lot lately. How did I come to appreciate this... all by letting go. I am not saying give up and walk away, but recognize the things in your life that you can control and what you can't. Sometimes walking away, we are not giving up, we are moving on...

I hope that the clouds will open up for you so that you can see how wonderful life can be.

Be well!

[faithbw]

Jan and NuckingFutz, thanks for your words of encouragement. I'm feeling better today and trying to look on the bright side. I talked to my mom yesterday and she said some similar things.