Anyone else feel that their direction in life is more related to being what "they're supposed to do" rather than any conviction or desire to pursue it?

we fully atomized now son, don't got no social spaces free of the ever present pressures of modern economic system. can't even sit down to play a game or read a book without wondering if you're wasting valuable money-making time.

i have been keenly aware of how passionless and directionless i've been since i was a teenager. used to think I was just depressed but it took me a long time to realize the system is letting me down, and i shouldn't be expected to change my very human wants and needs to conform to the soul crushing market-driven system we're cursed in

I guess that's the kicker. My Marxism combined with my evangelical brain worms so that vapid consumption feels empty. Even "non-vapid" consumption with things like traveling or whatever feels empty.

I feel like I'm the protagonist of "The Fever" and all of my existence is dictated by a desire to go do something but ultimately being driven towards doing what is "safe" or "what im supposed to do". That stress of the contradiction is gnawing at my brain and I don't know what to do about it.

I think this feeling is shared by 80-90% of people at minimum.

Personally, I've never found a way to do something meaningful (like, materially help people) that would also keep me and my disabled family members out of debilitating poverty. So I have no choice but to dedicate my working days to unethical profit-making shit.

Yeah, man. Meaningful callings that also pay your bills are few and far between. It's capitalism baby best system in da world

I'm on antidepressants!

Yeah, I guess after I graduated I thought I would feel better about this sort of thing but that really hasn't helped.

I've been thinking about seeking professional help.

I honestly don’t have any direction in life. Many people I know my age have high level positions or expertise and multi year outlook and plans, and we’ve barely hit 20 a few years ago. The only thing I think about in advanced is whether I’m going to sleep early or late.

If I did what was expected of me, I would be married with a family by now. Instead I’m materially okay and likely will be in the future, but I am just extremely lonely and have no desirable qualities outside of keeping a job.

People say that you should live for yourself and be happy with yourself first and everything else falls into place. All sound advice. But my desire is to be desired by others, and I don’t think any amount of hobbies or muscles or money will ever fill that hole. Everything else is meaningless to me; job, passion, wealth, politics, life itself.

“Comparison is the killer of joy” - sure, but when I have 0 comparable milestones to my peers, i don’t even know why I bother finding direction.

Right? Like realistically I'm doing fine and I think my personality is fine and I think I could find a life partner. I think I could find hobbies I like and develop them, but goddamn looking at it from where I am just feels vapid and denying the real situation of the world.

I need a revolution to go die in but also I'm a coward
- It’s good you’re still thinking about the world. It has sucked all joy and optimism from me. At this point I’m not even thinking about the injustices and inequality of the world. I’m just thinking about myself, and I can’t imagine the situation changing regardless of who’s in charge.
  
  I’ve thought about joining the military back in high school for a sense of belonging and relationships. Then I quickly realized how shitty these people are. Anyway, I don’t deserve a heroic death
  
  Right? Like realistically I'm doing fine and I think my personality is fine
  
  It’s funny, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my general social skills. People are comfortable around me in about every situation, they compliment me, find me funny, seek my advice and musings. But it’s when I try to elevate it to an actual, meaningful relationship that I lose all my senses. All of a sudden I don’t know what to say, and because of that I lose my desire to be around them.

You're not alone. We're told our whole lives that we're supposed to follow our dreams and contribute to society in some unique way, but the reality is that you are just a proletarian and you will probably just have a shit job, a completely pointless one if you're lucky, you just end up doing, and you may bounce around a bit before you land in it. A few hundred years ago, you would probably be a serf and you wouldn't have any weird ideas about contributing to society or your inner motivation to do something, just fucking planting and harvesting all the time. Same thing, a shit job you end up doing. If I have kids, I think I will probably not tell them any bullshit about having a "dream" because I doubt it will be possible to reconcile it with the world in any way. Finding creative hobbies and fun, pride in doing a good job and helping people, maybe duty and financial skills.

Absolutely (I mean if I had a path in life).

It has always boggled my mind some people just like... Pick something and stick with it. Like, really? You just decided you wanted to be a teacher, went to college for it, graduated and now have the job you've wanted for years? How the fuck?

I can't imagine doing something 8 hours a day, 5/7 days of the year for the rest of my life. I think 3 shifts a week is more than I could ever be happy with.
I've never stuck with anything that I didn't have friends doing alongside me. My friends liked to lift after school? Guess I'll set up a lifelong habit of fitness. My friends are watching one piece? Guess I'll just .
A lot of people choose being a teacher because at the very least you’re pretty much guaranteed health benefits. They’re not great, but you’ll be able to get your meds at the very least.

For someone like you, it seems like the "how you do it" is more important than the "what you do." You'd be happier doing the same thing for the union than for the boss. You might be looking in the wrong place for meaning.

You might also be depressed and/or suffering under capitalism. You can never divorce any philosophy of the spirit from the reality that society is designed to make you suffer

Hmm, insightful. You've given me some stuff to think about.

I'm known to be absurdly stubborn and don't do what anyone asks me to. Bonus is I've always followed my own plan for life no matter how many people tell me its stupid or wrong.

My goal? Play as many video games as physically possible, everything else is secondary. Its been my hyperfixation since I was like 6 and I've played hundreds and remember every single one down to being able to identify them from a crop of a wall texture in guessthe.game/

My parents call me sad, my friends/colleagues think I'm a freak, even leftists have shit on me for it and I refuse to do anything different cos other people can honestly go fuck themselves telling me how I'm supposed to live. I WILL play every single game and nobody can stop me.

The job I work is a means to an end to support this although currently I'm actually enjoying it but thats just cos i like being good at something. I guess thats also another drive is to be good at something, don't even particularly care what i just like being good at it

Playing video games is a valid way to live your life and fuck anyone with a rusty old screwdriver without lube who says you shouldn’t or that it’s bad. It not, it’s good, you good, we love you comrade!

thankfully my parents never asked anything off me and never gave me any direction in life, meaning i coasted along on my interests for the last decade or so and am pretty sure i am just going to run into a wall within the next three years (this is only half-ironic).

If possible I'd just live like a bohemian, but with rents rising all the time and social spaces no longer existing in any meaningful way that really doesn't seem possible anymore.

man life in the 21st century just sucks, I can't imagine there was any time in the last like 80 years that was any worse than this

I wish I was born in the USSR and got to experience being a gay commissar

that's how I started out, going to community college because my parents had forced me to. but I didn't have the drive because I don't really have any direction or goals in life, so I dropped out and they kicked me out. that was years ago, these days I have a job where I barely work part time and have flatmates to split the bills with to make this lifestyle work. I don't consider myself an enemy of the world but I definitely feel tired of participating in it when the things I love won't support me in it, I don't want some normal life with a 9-5. I don't plan to ever get married or have a family when I'm older, I'm just kind of riding shit out and hoping for the best.

Yeah, I'm fundamentally unsettled greatly by death though so riding it out feels like crap to me.

Like I have a clock to find meaning and I better hope I do before it runs out.
- I see. wishing you luck then, comrade.

Yes but what I'm supposed to do was determined by me to be:

Become fully independent of my parents
Avoid poverty thereafter

Unfortunately this in itself forces me into a path I have little conviction or desire for, but so far it seems like it was worth it.

yes 100%. shame it took me this long to figure that out but better late than never

Death to America

:yea: all the time

Do you have a conviction you feel you can't follow? Or do you generally feel like there isn't a conviction you feel called to?

Well, I thought I did want to do teaching and that's what my degree was in but I found myself giving advice and direction that I didn't believe in and that kind of left me feeling a bit ill. (Just did student teaching)

I guess I do believe it intellectually but emotionally it feels like ash. I guess that could be depression or something? I don't know.
- Honestly that sounds like alienation too, it's natural to feel a bit detached in that situation. We all gotta go through these things.

I wish I could do the things I'm supposed to do, like have kids with a house and a real career, or I wish I could do what I want to do as I did when I was younger, like travel and party with friends or other things.

I feel like I neither do what I'm supposed to do nor what I want to do, but I just do what I need to do to survive. I have a decent job but I'm just kina stuck between steps, I can no longer have the fun of young adulthood but I can't reach the milestones of an adult, and that realization makes me so depressed.

Is it a threadcrap to say no? If yes disregard this and sorry

I'm probably too autistic (and gay) (and etc) I guess but I cannot recall any time anybody ever had expectations of me. Even before my last year of highschool my mother either didn't want or couldn't afford to send me to college, to pretend that I was normal and put expectations onto me or whatever. That was long before she realised how many shades of "brainfunny queer" I am.

I just kind of drifted until I became an adult I guess. The only thing I can think of is my dad once implied I'd be a husband to some woman when I grew up, when I was like 10. Once I tried picturing myself in that role and it was immediately obvious to me that that wasn't real. It was obvious to me then that I was a weird fucker and would not be the Handsome Husband, even if I didn't know what a gender was yet.

I just got kicked out after I graduated highschool, which was whatever. Couchsurfed for a bit, moved in with dad, met my now-wife, got a job, and even by that point which was several years ago it was clear I was never going to have anything like a normal life or anyone expecting anything of me, the idea was laughable to me.

I guess the thrust of this is "queer temporality" + "autistic obliviousness", in short. No person I've ever met ever really had the notion to expect things of me though, even back when I'd been told I was just a normal straight boy, everyone from random family friends to authority figures in school seemed to just intuitively perceive that I was a fucking freak automatically, like they could smell it coming off me, that I was apparently so far outside of societal expectations. In a given year I barely make progress, thanks but keeping my head above water is struggle enough for me, no room for pathological needs to stumble forward. I also can't feel a strong enough calling to anything to follow it. I have stuff I want to do, but it's not viable as labour to sell under capitalism so I'm just in survival mode.

If this reads like I'm angry at OP or something, I'm not, weirdly this subject does agitate me somewhat though. I don't desire to have thing expected of me, so Idk why.

I kind of have the opposite problem of like "Sure my life is disorganized and not very impressive, but at least I'm not doing what's expected of me"

I think often about it. To me there's the life that happens to you, and it's not necessarily a life that you want or choose. I think most people accept what life brings them, and are largely passive observers of their life. Its not some innate thing like "NPC" language implies - but I think our society is built on people not being too active in choosing their own destiny. for those of us who have "destinies" and circumstances that are contra to our own desires, there is a dysphoria present.

Overcoming the inertia of life and the expectations present at every level of lived life isn't easy - at times it demands lurching into uncertainty, danger, and facing the unknown in a way that humans get conditioned to avoid at most costs. But I think I would personally rather die than submit to the mediocrities on offer for my compliance with late capitalism. It's too much of a spiritual death, a soul death, to bear. There is true living and love for life where finding a destiny we can all abide.

I don't have specific answers, but i know the feeling and i know that comporting myself to the influences of the world as it is fucking sucks and is loser behavior

I tried doing what I was "supposed" (expected?) to do for a while. By age 23 it was clearly not working out, everything seemed to be falling apart in my life and even if it wasn't, it didn't have the promise of going anywhere.

Finding people doing actual organizing in controversion of capitalism and empire made a switch in my life. And while I'll never have a "regular" professional career or suburban lifestyle, life is much more rewarding and true to myself than it ever was before.

Yes.

I feel like I always resisted the path put out for you because I knew my family was dysfunctional and I liked the arts, so being a normie was always off the table, but I also hated being poor. I feel like I stride a pretty fine line in my adult life. I am becoming a pretty good drummer and I have a decent job.

Somehow I think I got it to work, we'll see. I try not to let myself frame my life as stuck at any point. I've seen many times where I thought my life was over but it wasn't and it got better. It definitely takes some effort though. It also takes doing things you dont want to do and a degree of faith which I think many people have a hard time applying in their life.

The more i get what i want out of life (least amount of work for the most money, more play, more arts, more free time) the more liberated I feel. The world sucks and is wrong, why would I entertain anything it explicitly wants me to do.

Definitely. I tried doing an office job once but it was clearly not for me. And the funny thing is, my dream has always been to become a writer... welp, I'm now a writer (not the fun novelist kind, but the bullshit marketing kind) and I hate every minute of it. Ruined my passion for wordsmithing because now I can't do it just for creativity's sake because I don't have the time and I kinda need the money