I would have loved to be a programmer circa 2005-2020 but I got fucked by a rare disease that prevented any career aspirations

I wanted to do too many things, and still do, so I can’t answer this succinctly but…

OP, in your case, it’s never too late to get into what you want to do. Obviously it gets harder the more locked in your life becomes but you’d be surprised at what becomes available once you start.

Case in point, I was an automotive mechanic for a number of years. I didn’t start that career until I was already in my very late 30s. It was something I found interesting and always wanted to try so I gave it a shot. I had no prior trade work (I was a chef/cook prior to that) and my only experience was keeping my old junker running.

It put me on a great path that changed my life substantially for the better. Later I transitioned into something higher paying and easier.

When I was kid I absolutely fell in love with the game Endless Ocean for the wii. I really wanted to be a marine biologist or just do something where my job would be to spend tons of time out in the sea and diving.

I still wish I could. I live by the ocean and absolutely love fish and the sea. Getting on a boat and going out until land is super distant or out of sight is an absolutely magical experience. You really feel how big the world is. Maybe one day I can have the fund for scuba gear and do some underwater photography out there, but I doubt it.

I have an engineer’s heart but not an engineer’s brain. I can fix just about anything and I love thinking about how things work. I work best when I’m solving problems.

But I HATE math. My brain immediately checks out, and it was the only subject I struggled with in school. Academically, I’ve always just clicked more with history and language. I just knew I could never be an engineer because of the amount of math and physics required for an engineering degree. I ended up going for a teaching degree and now I work in museum education.

Space station architect

I simply do not dream of labor.

closest i would get to dream labor is labor on a homestead, taking care of animals and such

I’d love to be a philosopher, but the only job you can really get is teaching philosophy. Which is more of a teacher job and not really a philosophy job ironically enough.

I work in a metal fabrication shop so I’m usually tired when I get home most days so it would be hard to try and start a YouTube channel or something, and I’m not charismatic enough to just talk openly to a camera and have people watch.

I still read up on old thinkers, i just don’t get money for it. Kierkegaard is an older one i like. Idk if Alan Watts is considered one but he’s my favorite modern “thinker”, he gave me the most beautiful idea I’ve ever encountered so he’ll always be in my top 3.

Occultism/Natural Law/Hermeticism also have some interesting ideas.

Have to wade thru a lot of shit tho, especially in older books. My favorite was someone legitimately believing if you boiled piss for 5 years it would turn into the philosophers stone lolol. And if the temperature changes even 1° at any point in the 5 years you have to start over. And that’s why philosopher stones don’t exist anymore. I think the alchemists would say he had the “gold fever” as alchemy was more about turning a person as worthless as lead, into someone as valuable as gold. And there’s a clue to finding the actual “philosophers stone” in its name.

deleted by creator

My intention was to teach at the collegiac level while running a lab looking into longevity genes. Ultimately I could not handle being a student for another six years and a post doc for another six after that before I could spend another 10 years establishing a lab to finally make it which at that point I would be teaching and managing a lab and be directing research rather than doing it. That one year in a PhD program was an eye opener. The academic tracks are just getting to long.

“I am terrible with just knowing things.” Has anyone tried to help you with this? School or a friend maybe? And do you think it’s a problem with memory or that you just can’t grasp the concept? Sometimes it takes a teacher that you just click with or says just the right things in the right way. Or it takes persistence. Just don’t give up. I guarantee one day something will hit you and you’ll go "oh, I get it "

I want to be a landscape architect with a heavy emphasis on sustainability. I dream of turning dead parking lots into water catchment basins to support native perennials and trees. ala Brad Lancaster

but I can’t afford to go back to school, nor is there even a program like that in my area.

As a decent engineer, the good ones are generally those that don’t fully know what things are, but how they are put together.

I spent my working life sitting at a desk, so I have regularly thought about how my life would have turned out had I turned one of my high school side interests into a career instead: carpenter; electrician; or metal fabricator.

One career path I considered, but I was put off by the maths: engineering. Never picked a field/speciality. I just was always interested in how stuff worked, and wanted to have the skills to design cool solutions for problems.

Either software engineer or game developer, but both are, just like others have mentioned, more about babysitting AI agents rather than doing the iteration work if actually writing the code.

I guess the career im going into is either some other tech job via an internship or just work for the council government as an urban planner.

Sounds a bit nuts but I have serious considered working as a handyman-type of guy at a really, really remote location. Like forest rangers, working at the South Pole, etc…

These are ridiculously competitive jobs that don’t pay that well, but I guess they do appeal to a certain group of ppl so…