My third-of-life crisis

Much sympathy. Your chosen career is a risky one and there probably isn't a way to make it safe - otherwise there would be even more writers than there are now. The way to avoid years of dread seems to me to have a good side job, one that leaves you with some energy to write. Some thoughts:

1) You may want to think about how you can overcome your disgust with all things economic - your parents poisoned that aspect of intellectual life, but economics is fairly well regarded here abouts - maybe you can salvage it for yourself by making it your own? Coming at it form a more LW perspective?

2) Can you just pull out from professional life? Start writing now, arrange to come in later, deliberately, so it doesn't become a guilt trip for you? Live cheaply and just start writing? It sounds like you've got plenty of frustrations and stuff to write about - why not just write it, as therapy if nothing else?

3) Do you need to prepare for the fact that you may simply not be able to be a writer? Everyone starts down that road without knowing if they can do it - it's a lottery. If I were you I'd try to confront that reality head on, and try to be process rather than results oriented.

4) Are you taking care of your life generally? Food, excersize, sleep? Generalized misery, for me, is usually about these things, rather than the causes - career, family etc., which my brain outputs when I ask it what's wrong.

Upvoted for posting about your real problems despite them being messy. It's harder than people realize.

At their parties I feel alien, trying to understand conversations about authors and theories I ought to have read about but didn't because I spent those formative years trying to not kill myself.

I can sympathize. It's easy to feel like you'll never catch up to people who had various advantages in the past. I think, though, that you can get yourself onto a path where you wind up blowing right past those people who you used to compare yourself to without really noticing. This is because the right path has intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic, so you start forgetting to compare yourself to others.

First, you definitely write well and have your way with words in English, For someone who has apparently lived much of his life in a Spanish-speaking country, it is already impressive. Do you write in your spare time, fiction or non-fiction? Do people praise your writing and ask for more? If you do speak English half as well as you write, finding a way to live in an English-speaking country, where there are generally many more opportunities is certainly the order of business (ehm, sorry).

Second, what do you thing would be one thing (just one, not a combination of several) which could help you out of the funk? Examples: $100k, a writing contract, being accepted to the university in a program where you can finish your degree...

Look into doing Internet editing and tutoring work. You might be able to supplement your income giving Skype Spanish lessons to U.S. students. I have heard (although I am not sure) that lots of U.S. high schools are desperate for math teachers fluent in English and Spanish.

Also, like anyone else feeling depressed, see if you can benefit from improving your sleep, diet, and exercise routine.

Are the opinions of others causing you to put too much pressure on yourself? I believe there are several examples in your post of others laying significant expectations on you. You are expected to...

• Achieve the great future predicted for you when you were in high school
• Match the success of your brother
• Meet the career expectations of your parents and rest of family
• Match the perceived sophistication of your peers and friends
• Conform to the social norm that you should have already finished the degree you want

Heavy burdens to bear. It’s thoughtful of you to consider the wishes of those around you, but are you allowing them to wield an unhealthy amount of influence?

I’ve recently begun to examine this issue in my own life. I’ve made some progress and it feels wonderfully liberating. Hope this helps.

Hey there amigo. I hope I can offer something resembling good advice for your 1/3 life crisis.

It appears to me these two statements are incompatible:

"...especially because my definition of failure included their definition of success: become some company manager, get an MBA, join the rat race"

"My 2004 self would have been quite impressed at how much I've achieved, but what I'm feeling right now is stagnation. Every time I hear of a new sensation writer under 30 I feel mortified that I haven't been able to come up with anything half decent."

• In the first quote, you claim that you have no desire to "join the rat race", and that the pressure to do so has caused myriad psychological issues.
• In the second, you claim that you "feel mortified" when you "hear of a new sensation writer under 30".

If the first statement is true, then why should the reality of the second make you feel anything? Do you want to be a sensation writer under 30 (or at 32)? Or do you not care about the rat race? Answering this question firmly and moving forward without regrets may aid your mental health!

To choose to be a writer cannot be to choose a life of fame. Fame does not necessarily come from good writing, nor are the institutions which decide who becomes famous set up to promote good writing -- they are set up to make money. They are failed institutions in that regard, precisely for their successes. As zslastman pointed out, you may try being process, rather than results, oriented for this precise reason!

I think this next quote from you, in particular, shows that you entered something unaware of what it is you want:

"My second therapist said my chosen path as a writer was one that gave its best fruits in old age, but I don't want more decades of dread and uncertainty."

What does "best fruits" mean to you? Why does it come in old age? Why can't it come right now? You want to be "a writer", but your conception of what that means does not reflect reality. After all, aren't you a "writer" right now? Or does being a "writer" mean being a sensation under 30? Or a sensation at 43 when you finally "make it"? Maybe you don't want to be a "writer" at all. Maybe you want to be a sensation. That's something else entirely. And given how arbitrary becoming a sensation is, and that the institutions which create sensations have little to do with individual (read: your) effort, if what you want is to be a sensation then you better also prepare for the price: decades of dread and uncertainty.

Something has to give. The nice thing about a "crisis" is that it implies a contradiction. Use the contradiction to illuminate the discrepancies within it between your conceptions and existing conditions. Hope this helps!

I have become everyone's joke at the office because I am so unmotivated that I'm unable to arrive on time every morning, but I've become so good at the job that my boss doesn't mind, and literally everyone asks me about basic stuff all the time. I was head editor for one year, but I almost went into nervous breakdown and requested to be downgraded to regular editor, where life is much more manageable.

This sparked two thoughts.

First, if you are already arriving late to work, you might consider intentionally rearranging your day to get up and write first thing. It seems that the path you want most is in writing, so you might look for ways to use the part of your day when your mind is most fresh for that.

Second, not everyone should join management. Being able to do something well is not the same as being able to manage someone else doing it. You seem to fill more the role of a team lead -- the expert that everyone goes to asking how to do it. Eventually a good team lead becomes irreplaceable, especially if they actually embrace the role of mentor and teacher. That means that you will have the pull to ask for the projects that interest you most and to ask for more compensation. But using that pull can be a difficult balance. You have to be careful to ask in way that causes your boss to agree you deserve it, even if your boss can't give it to you. Eventually, the boss will give you something. You just have to avoid being a pest in the meantime.

I would have been in a similar situation had it been not for my second chance. My parents forced me into an area of study I didn't like, Although, I later managed to switch universities and courses into what I wanted to get into. It did end up meaning being dependent on them for a few more years and it wasn't a very comfortable experience.

But its not that I can't relate to how you feel right now. Even through I work in the field I like, my company discriminates heavily based on post graduate education. For example, if you have a postgraduate degree or a PhD, your pay and the sorts of projects you get to work in tend to be significantly better and more interesting than if you just have a degree. It makes me think that if I got into what I did sooner and spent as many years in university, I'd also have had a PhD. And work done by most other companies in this area is not as interesting. I'd probably fall asleep as I've done previously. When you have differentiated experience based on qualifications like this, something to the effect of Mathew's law start to play. Those with better qualifications get better and better doing more challenging work and those with less qualifications are always left doing grunt work.

Anyway, I've stopped waiting for my job to make me better. I've stopped spending weekends and overtime doing office work. No matter how much effort I put into them, it's more or less the same work over and over. It does not scale. It does not take me where I want to go. It does no feel like I am pushing my limits. However, I am also not in a position to just quit my job and study for a couple of years. So I've gone on a self-directed journey to fill gaps in my knowledge with MOOCs and courses and take other initiatives like personal projects and such. It does cut heavily into my social life and a few other sacrifices. I am not even sure how well this will pay out. But it just feels too damn frustrating to not do anything about it.

Your parents did you a great disservice, though that doesn't mean you can't self-improve. I've faced similar struggles, though arguably not as severe. My parents were also a large driving force in my life and had me make decisions I did not want to make. For depression, I'd say to make it a habit to find a couple things every day to be appreciative of. For cash, I'd try tutoring people online english. A lot of parents of high school students concerned about their children's grades and getting into college, and will spend money to have them tutored, even if it's online. There are also agencies to go through for that.

For that matter, there are a lot of ordinary tasks people will pay money for you to do. You can be someone's online PA (again through agencies) or a copywriter. Point is, there are a lot of ways to earn money on the side, so you can get your head above water financially.

I don't know enough about the writing career to give any advice on that, nor do I know much about the state of Colombia. But from what you say, it sounds pretty difficult to make it there. This might sound a bit extreme, but have you considered moving to another country?

You're fluent in english, which means you probably could learn another language if you wanted. Duolingo has a number of languages on there that you could learn, so if you do consider moving to another country, you wouldn't be limited to countries that speak spanish or english.

Also check out holiday/work visas. I don't know if Colombia is one of the listed acceptable countries. You can work/holiday in australia, saving something like $18k-20k+ USD. Check out this post. As a potential plan, you can save up the money you need to get the visa using secondary income via tutoring languages, and then spend a year in Australia. There's no reason you couldn't keep taking online courses while doing that, and you'd end the year with a fair amount of money in your bank, which might allow you to study full-time for a bit, depending on the cost of living in Colombia or wherever you choose to go.

How confident am I that this can work? Well, I'm basically giving you my plan, except my side job is as an illustrator.

Although your problems reinforce each other, you may be able to improve each problem independently. Think of it like untying a knot: You pull a bit at each loop in turn, and eventually everything loosens up. In particular, be careful of giving one node (e.g. achieving success as a writer, getting a degree) an exaggerated influence on other nodes (e.g. improving your relationships). And I deliberately phrase this with some ambiguity: Try not to hold any mistaken beliefs about how much one thing can improve another, but also don't arrange your life so that one thing truly has a vulgar influence over other areas of your life, or let an obstacle in one area stop you from acting in some other area.

I'm not saying that your problems are actually independent or of equal priority, but in practice, trying to untie a knot by pulling at a single loop is a common mistake.

Similarly, the origin of a problem can be quite separate from its solution. I think this is the productive attitude to take concerning the past. Unless you can realistically expect that further reflection on your early relationships with your parents is going to uncover some new action you can take right now, or lead to some emotion resolution that (for some reason) hasn't already happened, then well, don't expect it. If you've thought about something for a while and aren't making progress, you can leave it unresolved for now and move on. Maybe later things will be different. Despite the emotional pull of these problems, people seem to eventually internalize this attitude. At the very least, try to have a novel approach if you do think about these things.

More specific thoughts:

Do you want to visit your siblings and aunts? If so, you just do it and learn to roll your eyes when they talk about you "seeing sense", or give advice or make comparisons. You're not at all alone in being the black sheep of a family. Under many conditions, this is still compatible with having good relationships. Per above, don't let your career problems (or their opinion of your problems) have undue sway over your relationships today, even if they developed in tandem, and don't hold your breath for some moment of resolution. I would say something like "swallow your pride", but in all honestly I think black sheep just learn to reclassify certain things as "nagging" and ignore them.

Can you sell to the English speaking market while living in Columbia? It's not exactly easy to make a living as a writer anywhere, but the rough numbers I've seen thrown about for the English market look much better at a lower cost of living. The quality of your English seems fine.

There's something of an honorable tradition of writers selling out. I suspect this is not as easy as writers imagine, but you could try it. It may even be fun.

As others have mentioned, is your aversion to business and economics something you want to change? Since your aversion is clearly rooted in circumstantial emotional history, you might still discover that the ideas themselves are interesting, once you remove the emotional baggage. Of course, the real business world is full of nonsense and boredom, but these aspects are easier to bear if you have some detached intellectual appreciation.

I'm just turning 30. I spent my 20s in education (undergraduate and law school) and the Army. I'm now interested in technology and entrepreneurship. For several years, I was extremely frustrated that I didn't know any math or programming: my humanities background felt like a huge waste of time. In other words - I really feel your frustration at being "behind the curve."

However, even a third of the way through life isn't too late to change course - remember, you and I are only a decade past the normal college years, when most people learn their trade. It'll be challenging to catch up, but not impossible. I finished my legal job a few months ago, and now I'm living out of my home country in a cheaper location, taking MOOCs to learn to program.

(I couldn't agree more with your definition of failure, by the way: if people find meaning in joining a corporate giant and working their way up, great, it is actually quite impressive, but it would kill me.)

From reading your post, it sounds as though you more-or-less know what you would like (am I wrong?): to make some more money, hold a more-or-less prestigious position, get published more, and/or get into a good graduate program in journalism (?). But you struggle with the effects of your past, and you don't see a clear position forward, since you lack money and credentials. Those are real challenges.

I think posting your question on LW is a great first step. You, and your chosen path, are not "normal," and family and friends often just are not open to alternative career paths. Many people simply cannot imagine legitimate careers that stray from the beaten path. Getting a sanity check by finding like-minded people can be encouraging and strengthening. I don't know how many friends you have who are supportive of your desire not to work in a soul-crushing job for 30 years...excuse me, I mean, your desire not to "work responsibly"...but if you don't have many, then please keep reaching out. There are lots of people like you. (feel free to message me)

In fact, perhaps you should travel elsewhere, long-term. In a new place, with new people, a different schedule, things might look different. Scandinavia sounds nice...

Finally, I have often read that daily writing is the single best practice for a writer. So you could set yourself the project of figuring out motivation/self-modding to get yourself to do that. The writer's redemption: if you write something well, then who cares about the rest of your life?

The important thing is to capture the now. Starting at a young age is no guarantee of success. I just recently committed to writing full time and I spent the past decade of my life doing pretty much everything else but writing for myself. It is very hard to see successful professional friends and how well their lives seem to be doing while you are stagnant.

What is yours will not pass you by. The right opportunity and the right situation can be yours the key is to be looking for the right opportunity and find out what within yourself needs to shift in order to make that possible. I understand how parents can have a terrible effect on you. My whole life was run by my parents until I was well within my 20s and if I let them they would still be running things. There is a deadline for blaming your parents for life problems and you haven't passed it yet. I agree that side work and writing is the best thing to do. As many greater writers have said, if you feel the need to the write there is only one important thing in your life to do and that is write, write, write. Hone that craft!

What kind of freelance writing are you doing/could you do? Whether or not you have a job at a newspaper, do you have any relationships with editors who you can pitch? Most people enter writing by doing a lot of freelancing and (maybe) ending up with a job, but amassing a big portfolio of clips.

I'm not sure, from this post, which kind of journalism you're interested in. Longform profiles? Reviews? Beat reporting? Editorial?

You can't get steady work doing any of those easily, but you can often get sporadic work (and feedback/experience) doing any of them

You might wan't to have a look at the much cited on LW work by Seligman (this is an online link, no cost implied). This is advertized as self-help but goes deeper. Seligman explicitly talks about depression and parent influence and even though he doesn't give specific advice he might give you some deeper insight into your situation and what you can and can't expect to change. And where and how you even might arrange yourself with the situation.

I sent you a message.

There's always ISIS.

I don't know what to do at this point.

Accept full responsibility for your own life.