r/NEETsOver30

I got no clue Kya kr rha hu apni life me kya nhi I want to earn and stand on my own feet I m doing bams and mera zero interest h isme na mere dimag me jata h kuch na me pdhta hu kuch isme bus time waste 1.5sal ho gya ha Ghar walo k liye kr rha hu jo bhi unhe degree chahie Mera argue bhi hua tha starting me jb mene li thi ye ki muje nhi Krna ye pr ghr Wale nhi mane bole degree k liye kr le usk bad jo Krna kr and ab me fas gya hun gya meri mental health khtm ho chuki h muje smjhh hi ni aa ra muje kya Krna hai kya nhi mera kya interest h ya nhi aage ja kr kya kruga kya nhi kuch bhi nhi pta ab muje

So I hear all the time about people getting rejected because they don’t have uni degrees or 2 plus year experience and all that.

But what is the actual path of you have never worked ever, and you’re in your mid 30s? Like what is the actual expectation of the government? Especially when you have mental heath issues, but the treatment for that is also unavailable. And that although not acknowledged by the government is the main reason for unemployment?

This is something some normies don't understand about NEETs and other demographics and simply can't relate to: Just because something worked out for you, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to work out for another person. It's very simple, but so many people choose to be closeminded and want to have an explanation for everything. "You're not successful because you're simply not trying hard enough!" "The state of the economy isn't that important" "When there's a will, there's a way" (empty platitude).

There are so many factors that determine living a relatively financially-sound life: location, race, gender, culture, physical appearance, shape, experience, no experience, creativity, skills, impression, assumptions, stereotypes, luck, timing, disabilities/disorders, family influence, connections, networks, etc.

I hope one day there'll be a realistic and fair solution to address NEETdom.

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- Chill. Do nothing.

- Spend years trying to crack JEE/NEET even when you know your heart isn't in it.

- After the results, join a random college and pursue a random degree.

- Graduate.

- Congratulations—you're now an educated unemployed person.

And then... the real struggle begins.

i'm not really in the place where i can apply to decent-paying jobs, despite having a university degree with a good GPA. i've been unemployed for six years, and for whatever reason, no one wants to be my reference. there are some volunteering organizations that require two references, and I don't even have those two. apparently I'm not even qualified for unpaid positions, fml.

not to mention, everyone that I used to know already left me and it's so fucking hard to make close friends offline. no one wants to be more than acquaintances with me, even at those stupid "board game" meetups or whatever. no one gives a shit about me.

and so, I recently made a post in a platonic friend-finding community in my city. i said I was specifically looking for other girls to talk to, who were somewhat close to my age, but everyone who messaged me was married and had good-paying, busy careers. it just kind of made me feel like shit, honestly.

why do people feel the need to sound impressive and polished when they're reaching out? why do they feel the need to be curated? I always mention that I've been out of the workforce for a long time when I make these posts. I mention that i'm looking for women who are also quite isolated and are looking for close friends, and it's infuriating how I keep attracting the wrong people.

i don't know. i hate it so much.

i don't want unsolicited career advice. i'm not in the headspace to be spamming CVs on indeed that never get responses anyway.

31M and I work in security.

There are days that are easier some are harder to get through. I like that I'm not being micro managed and it's basically me patrolling and reporting if I find something that shouldn't be there. It's a lot of walking and standing on your feet, so on the flip side I guess I do get my 10k+ steps a days, although for me it's more like 30k+ during a shift.

The pay is ok, could be better, but some extra income does help. On this salary I still can not afford to live alone so I still stay with my parents.

I actually for the first time decided to set aside some of my income into index funds and let them sit there. It's nothing huge, more like whatever money I don't mind losing if shit hits the storm.

Work wise all my colleagues are much older than I am and they wonder what I'm doing there and not some other job. My boss says I should apply myself, I'm still young, because he can tell I have potential in me or whatever, and as much as I appreciate the sentiment. It's just mentally I know at this stage this is where I am at and what I can handle.

The job itself is not too social, not being stuck in an office. I like that. As with any job there are good and bad parts, but I just try to keep it together. Although, I do at times feel how pointless all that I do seems as if I am so stuck and I don't even know how to develop/grow/evolve.

And then sometimes I think well I surely can just off myself if I can't handle it anymore. But then another day goes by and you trundle along.

Doesn't help in this work that I'm 31 but look 25, and all the other men have families and kids and are 50+ and just a couple of other guys in mid 30s.

A few weeks back a guy from another department asked me if I was single or married and I said - neither. And then he hinted that a girl that works with him noticed me and she's a bit shy but finds me interesting. I didn't give it much thought until next day she added me on facebook.

I sort of tried to get to know her and we exchanged some messages here and there, but at one point it felt like I was just the one keeping the conversation going. 10+ hours between replies. Felt like I was interviewing her, a dialogue is supposed to go both ways, but if I am the only one asking or trying to interact and the other doesn't reciprocate I don't play those games. So I just stopped messaging her, I say hi when I see her in person but that's the extent of it. Either way a part of me is glad that I went for it, I'd rather have tried and failed, than be left guessing.

It's weird 3 months, and yet it feels like it's been a year already doing this. I honestly don't know how much I'll be able to fake it and keep up the facade and I try to keep a positive mental attitude. On my days off I go on runs, or just for a walk in nature. But none of that takes away from the fact that I just see no point to it, and maintaining any hope that it will get better seems harder.

Sometimes when I look at myself from the outside I realize what a boring, solitary, confined, uneventful life I've lived. Funny how when I was in my 20's I was like no way I'll get to live to 30, and yet here I am.

Just wanted to vent a bit, thanks for reading.

I recently turned 38. I graduated years ago with a first class degree in physics and then a masters degree. They gave me a scholarship for the masters, so I just went along with it. Both times I mostly stayed at home and self-taught everything. I felt pressured to get a degree because I was in my mid 20s and going nowhere. Anyway, after both degrees I couldn't land a graduate job. I didn't apply for anywhere near enough jobs due to anxiety and depression, but I passed pretty much every psychometric and analytical test that was thrown at me. Meanwhile, everyone else graduated and got a job straight away, even the people who were pretty bad, academically speaking. In fact, if I go on LinkedIn I can see that everyone I have ever known has pretty much walked into a job after completing university. Some great jobs, some meh. The bottom line is, everyone else has much more drive and hustle than me (and luck?).

A few years after graduating I pretty much gave up and stopped looking for jobs. However, I applied for medical school repeatedly. I eventually got in. This was my golden opportunity to turn things around, and I fucked it up. I ended up not going because of my mental health issues and because of money. It was in Scotland and the Scottish students got a free ride, whilst everyone else was wealthy (only 5% of medical school students are from a working class background). The postgraduate halls alone were 8 grand a year. Anyway it was all too much, and I have no friends for support and my parents, especially my father, weren't exactly pushing me hard. Eventually I lost my place. I contacted a lawyer to try and get back in and they quoted me thousands in legal fees. I tried free law clinics and they all turned me down. I resat the entry tests and applied for medical schools again, and again. I had a few interviews, including one in the midlands where I drove myself 150 miles there and 150 miles back. I didn't get in. If I had lots of money I could just go to a private university like Buckinghamshire, or go to a university in Europe. But I don't have enough savings to stretch that far.

I'm completely lost now and don't know what to do. A while back I asked my GP to refer me for an autism and an ADHD assessment. I'm also back on an antidepressant. I spend most days in my room. The isolation and the loneliness would drive almost anyone insane, but I am numb to it. I don't know what is wrong with me. I think socialising might help, but I am too embarrassed to try in case people find out about my life.

I could have been graduating from medical school this year if everything went perfectly. Instead of being NEET I could have been a resident doctor. I have spent so many years unemployed. To go from that to being a doctor would have meant finally being proud of something. I would no longer cringe when people ask me "what I do for a living". I've mulled over the idea of doing a PGCE because it is a funded course, but I am shy and quiet and I think I would be like a fish out of water. I think I would also get tired of coming home from work and doing lesson planning. It's not something I've dreamt of doing.

My overriding feeling is I don't fit in. Since becoming an adult, everything has been a struggle for me.

It's so hard to not feel like a failure at every step in life. I'm only trying to achieve the bare minimum that people my age have and there's so many bad habits, bad coping mechanisms, and bad practices that I have to unlearn. Whether it's my health, career, interpersonal relationships, or just my own mindset.

I try to eat better, I try to exercise more, I'm studying, I'm applying to jobs, I'm reaching out to people more, I'm trying to not act like a bitter depressed asshole, I'm trying to be more mindful of how I treat myself, I'm trying to be more proactive about problems instead of avoiding them, I'm trying to take better care of my hygiene, I'm trying to be kinder to myself. And even when I start building up a good habit, it's a fight to keep it going because I easily slip back into the bad habits. I haven't tried to get my finances in order because it's not like I can pay for student loans with no job. My credit is all sorts of fucked up and everything is going to be way more expensive for a long time.

I know the correct answer for me isn't to give up but it all just feels so insurmountable to put in this huge amount of effort everyday. And somehow it simultaneously feels like I'm not doing enough/progressing fast enough.

I can only repeat, "be kinder to yourself" so many times when constantly fucking up basic shit that would've been cute ten years ago, but now that I'm in my mid 30s is just sad (Like recently, I've only just realized my resume is complete ass after applying with it for 6 months. And I've only realized this because I printed it out to go to a job fair). How does everyone do this shit? Nothing to do but cry about it and keep trying.

I don't really want advice. I don't want to be lectured. i just want people to understand what I'm talking about

and please spare me the "don't take it personally" bs. I'm a very thin skinned, emotionally sensitive person, and I don't think its fair that only thick skin is acceptable in this world. if people were less hostile, then thin skin wouldn't be seen as a weakness.

I need to vent because I'm struggling badly with a loss that has hit me harder than almost anything I can remember.

I'm a 30 year old from Paraguay. For the last decade I was a NEET with no job experience and no formal studies beyond high school, spending most of my time in my room on the internet and constantly immersed in English-language content since I was a kid. The only upside is that during that time I became fluent in English (rare here in Paraguay) through years of playing video games, reading books, watching Youtube videos and livestreams, browsing forums, and talking to people on Discord, all without ever taking classes or traveling abroad. The downside is that I spent years barely talking to other people in real life, my real-world social muscles atrophied badly and my social life basically never developed.

In my early twenties I developed severe depression after a horrific mental breakdown during a psilocybin trip, and eventually I fell into addiction in my mid-20s and ended up abusing several drugs including benzos, opioids, heroin bought off the darknet, and alcohol. I nearly died from an overdose at 27 after shooting up heroin while drunk and passing out locked in my bathroom, until my sister found me unconscious and rushed me to the hospital where I spent three days in the ICU. That incident was my rock bottom and a few months after it I decided to completely sober up from all drugs and quit cold turkey. I then started training at the gym consistently four days a week, which helped me stay sober and off substances, though I still struggled constantly with my mental health.

Then in March this year I met a 33 year old Canadian expat who was a remote programmer and digital nomad living here in the capital city for some months. We had originally met through 4chan and he was surprised to find a Paraguayan on there so we immediately connected as like-minded, neurodivergent loners. We talked on Discord briefly and a few months later we met in person for the first time, where we talked for three and a half hours that didn't feel like that long because we were both so into it and I had never had a conversation like that in my life. He was so excited and said he felt like he'd found a unicorn because it was very rare to find someone in Paraguay who was both English-speaking and familiar with online subcultures like 4chan, and who could understand him on a deeper level than others. He really wanted to be my friend since during his stay he'd had contact only with other expats, and he didn't speak much Spanish and couldn't talk to many locals like me. I remember being terrified before meeting him because he had told me on Discord that he was from a wealthy family, had business experience, traveled around the world, and overall seemed more accomplished than someone like me who had done nothing with his life. I was terrified at first of being rejected as a loser but after I opened up and told him I had no job experience and had struggled my whole life with depression and addiction, he told me he had more respect for people like me than for wage workers who devoted their entire lives to a system he hates. For the first time in my life I'd found someone who still accepted me somehow.

Over the next three months we messaged and called each other almost every day, exchanged around 4000 messages in total and met in person 14 times. We talked for three to eight hours straight each time without running out of things to say. Sadly, I carried a lot of anxiety throughout because I was terrified of losing my only friendship, and years of isolation and substance use had left me prone to severe anxiety around other people. It was very difficult for me to open up and be as warm and friendly as he was with me, and I also felt very self-conscious speaking English, which added to the nervousness. Still, he was the most significant connection I'd had in my life and this was the first time I'd ever spoken English out loud with another person in real life after about two decades of building that skill completely alone in my room.

In April he proposed we start a business together because he wanted to have a shared project with me so that we could have a deeper friendship and more reasons to spend time together. He said that if I failed him and ruined the business, the friendship would end, but that it was worth the risk and I should roll the dice on this opportunity. This terrified me because I didn't want to lose the friendship, and I didn't feel at all capable of running a business after decades of rotting in my room without much real-world experience. But he thought I had a lot of potential and that I could do this, and put his faith in me and was willing to invest money in it, so the stakes for me felt immense. He came up with the idea of a chocolate product after he found a gap in the local market with genuine potential for success. I had a working recipe for the product, local knowledge, and the ability to navigate local operations with my native Spanish to execute the business, while he had the capital, previous international business experience, and the research skills to find everything we needed. We were both still relatively young in our early 30s, single, childless, with few responsibilities, and since his remote job wasn't very demanding we both had a lot of free time to execute it. Everything seemed so perfect for this to go well. He told me he was giving me this opportunity to get me out of my situation and into the real world, help me gain confidence, make money, etc. and I felt like my life was finally starting to move forward after so many years of misery and stagnation. It felt like a redemption that made it all worth it in the end and suddenly I had hope for my future for the first time in years. He framed it however as "you need this, I don't, I'm just doing it for the experience" which gave him a lot of leverage and power over me.

Pretty early on it got really difficult. I was 40 minutes late to our fourth meeting due to poor scheduling on my part when he was going to give me the ingredients he'd bought to make the product, and he got mad at me, telling me this was "strike one" and bringing up his past business partners who'd failed him for exactly this kind of thing. After that I felt like I was walking on a tightrope the entire time, constantly afraid of making another "strike" and destroying both a unique friendship and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which I think ironically made me perform worse and prevented me from being warm and natural with him. He'd say "I'm done" as a kind of threat whenever he was frustrated with me then walk it back after I complied with him, and he framed my mental health history as a liability to the business. He had spent $200 on the equipment we were going to use in production, and after that we were going to talk to another business owner I'd found as a contact to try to make a deal with him and possibly team up.

But then suddenly I got sick and was bedbound for three weeks in May during which I relapsed into depression and stopped messaging him as frequently, which I think was partly due to the immense pressure and anxiety that was building up in me trying not to mess up and ruin everything, especially after seeing him spend $200 on the equipment and put his faith in me to go do the business deal and not screw up. I felt suicidal and almost tried to end it all, feeling stuck in a situation where I didn't want to abandon it but also felt I couldn't move forward with it. As soon as I recovered we had a meeting where he was coming off a Vyvanse crash telling me that this last incident made me unreliable, and he went on a name-calling tirade calling me dumb and "very, very stupid" and told me this was the final nail in the coffin. During that rant I told him I wasn't feeling good and had been having suicidal thoughts, and he responded that he wasn't going to tell me to act on it or not act on it, but that if I did I would finally be at peace. I told him I didn't think I could be a good friend or business partner because my life was messed up and I couldn't really offer anything to anyone living like this, and I needed to get a job, structure, stability, and routine first to fix my life and become a stable person. He had done so many things for me the whole time we were together, he bought me food when I had no money to buy any, paid for my Ubers, gave me supplements to help with depression and insomnia, said the first profits of the business would go to me because my struggling family and I needed it more, offered to teach me skills and help me find a job, and listened to me and gave me confidence.

Eventually the business fell apart after we had a heated argument at his apartment over how to proceed next, where he proposed that I go talk to that business owner in person and try to pitch a deal all by myself without him coming with me, as a way to prove to him I could do this so he could feel safe investing money in this partnership. I felt like I couldn't do it because I was an anxious shut-in with low self-esteem, while this business owner was an important, socially successful person and the thought of approaching him filled me with absolute dread and anxiety. He decided not to continue after that, and after a brief exchange of messages where I thanked him for everything and asked if he was still up for meeting for coffee once I got a job and became more stable (which I had planned to do soon), he replied "we'll see, get the job and all that and we'll see" then blocked me.

That was two weeks ago and since then I've been waking up every day with intense regret, anxiety, grief, and constant "what if" thoughts. What if I had handled that conversation differently? What if I had been warmer? What if I had communicated better? What if I hadn't let my anxiety get in the way? The hardest part is not just losing the business but also losing a unique friendship and opportunity. For a few months my life contained daily contact, shared goals, long conversations, intellectual connection, and hope, then it disappeared overnight. I've stopped going to the gym, lost my appetite, and can barely get out of bed. My mind keeps replaying memories and imagining alternate timelines where things worked out differently.

I can see that this relationship probably wasn't as healthy as I wanted to believe and that some of the responsibility belongs to him and some belongs to me, but emotionally I feel like I've lost something irreplaceable and that I'll never get another opportunity like this again. I don't really know how to move forward. I think part of what's underneath this is that the isolation that built my English is the same thing that left me without the social tools to hold onto a connection once I found one. The thing that made me interesting enough to him is tangled up with the thing that made it so hard for me to be his friend and business partner. What scares me is that surviving addiction, surviving an overdose, and sobering up felt easier than dealing with this loss. I know that's probably because this experience touched needs that had gone unmet for years like friendship, connection, purpose and belonging. But emotionally it feels like I've lost something irreplaceable. I don't know how to stop dwelling on what could have been, and I don't know how to move forward from the feeling that I threw away the most important opportunity and friendship of my life.