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F!S Anon Meme (the ??th)

Secrets, rants, opinions, anything you want to say about your fandom or a fandom or fandom in general, do it here! Anonymously, of course. Get it all off your chest.

Some ground rules:
1. Going anon is encouraged but not absolutely required (for those who struggle with recaptchas and stuff).
2. No autoplaying/autolooping embeds, or embeds that cover/stretch the screen.
3. No dropping personal info or IRL contact info, etc.

That's about it, though!

(Today's post is below.)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm only in my mid-20's and already I'm starting to feel like I've made the wrong decisions in life. I pushed my love of something aside to get an education in something I thought was easily hirable and pays well enough, only now I've graduated and still don't have a job and I feel so utterly worthless.

And I look at beautiful, shining, successful people in the field I shunned and am starting to realize that I will never be them, and it's making me cry. And I know that field is risky and you're almost always destined to be starving artist than a superstar, but I'm really beginning to wonder if I haven't made a terrible, irreversible mistake.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel you, anon. I see people who are following their dreams (going to arts and animation colleges), while I follow a career in politics. 8| Have you ever thought of taking art classes? That's what I'm doing as a side thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, to be somewhat more specific, the field is musical theatre. So while I can take voice/acting/dancing lessons, it just doesn't compare to being in a production. And most community theatres around here are purely theatre groups, not musical ones.

[(Anonymous)]

If it's any consolation, I followed my dreams doing an art degree, and now I'm also unemployed and totally scared I missed my chance at actually being anyone in the creative sector. I mean, I get to say I followed my dream - but it's not glamorous, either.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't beat yourself up too much, anon. You may have made a mistake, but never is an awfully strong word- and there's no guarantee that if you HAD made the opposite choice that you wouldn't be here right now regretting that you didn't take the 'safe' path and looking at the successful people in that field instead. As you discovered with your 'easily hirable' choice, not everyone on a given path winds up successful, especially in today's job market.

But it's not too late. You may be in a worse position to reach for that dream then you were 3-5 years ago, but that doesn't mean it will be forever beyond you. I'm in a completely different field right now that I studied for in undergrad, and I was far from the only one at grad school in that position. It wasn't just people in our age bracket, either; my classmates included people 20-30 years my senior, with kids of their own who were about to go into college themselves. You aren't necessarily as locked into your current path as you probably feel. Even if your choice was a mistake, it's not necessarily an irreparable one.

Do you have any community colleges in your area? Even if you can't afford to go back into higher ed for a while, you might be able to pick up a class here and there in your dream field while you work on sorting out your current situation.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks. I actually had a friend in theatre who's parents were in theatre and they apparently always told her that they regretted going into it, that life would be better if they'd had jobs with secure income and stability. I told her my father - who was a musician in his youth - had the exact opposite regrets in becoming an engineer instead. And it's something I keep telling myself, that there's no "right" path, that no matter what I would've chosen, there'd still be regrets somewhere... but it's hard.

And tbh, I know I'll feel better once I have some income coming in, but right now I'm just left wondering what the point of it all was if I'm left broke either way.

I'm doing my best to "balance" both of my lives, but until I get a better grip on things I'm worried that - in trying to hold onto two things - it won't be enough for either.

[(Anonymous)]

Is it really that impossible for you to get into that field? You're only in your mid-20s so, while you might be behind those who went into that field earlier, it doesn't mean you can't do it.

If you try and fail, at least you'll know you tried. Good luck. ::hugs::

[(Anonymous)]

I know that feeling, anon. My SO is a teacher (which she wanted to be), but even though her first love is English she specifically went into mathematics because there's so many more more job opportunities for math/science teachers than for humanities teachers. She got hired right out of college, unlike a lot of our teacher friends.

I, on the other hand, followed my dreams and actually did eventually manage to get myself a job I love in a field I enjoy, but it was three years' worth of hell getting here.

And by "hell" I mean 80-hour weeks where I did just enough classes for my master's degree to be a full-time student so I qualified for health insurance, did volunteer work for which I was stupendously overqualified at the place that later hired me, and paid for it all with a part-time minimum-wage fast food job for which I regularly had to be up at four o'clock in the morning.