Being lost in your (almost)30s

“What are your career plans?”

“When are you going to settle down?”

“Are you going to be buying a house soon?”

“Why do you still live with your parents?”

All these questions and more are a quintessential part of the almost 30 experience. I feel like it was only last year that I was wide-eyed and looking to change to world when I graduated university.

Now employed at a full time job -that I love but won’t let me afford a mortgage- and staring at university admissions requirements for graduate programmes I realised that all those wide-eyed goals I had were not actually what I want.

Society tells us to never sit still, always progress. Free-time on the weekends? start a business. Stagnation in your job role? Spend every waking minute looking for a graduate programme and take a loan to study. All this advise comes from well-meaning people who seemed to have come from a more positive time. With the job market in turmoil and a work culture that has become hyper-focused on expeller pressing every drop of productivity from you. It seems unreasonable that the focus is on the individual. “Do better”, “Work harder”, “Hustle” all these words are constant rings making me stare at the screen of my computer for programmes that I would like to apply to but would probably never get into and if by some miracle I did I would not be able to afford it.

Does it make sense to put myself in debt so I can progress. Many people would respond with a resonating yes. I look at it another way, I like my job it’s easy enough for me to be good at to keep and and gives me the mental space to live a life I enjoy. In my last year before my 30s I’ve travelled more, created hobbies and found a good pace with volunteering.

I’ve found friends I enjoy, recipes I love and the comfort of early morning hikes and staying up all night to read a book.

Is it worth it to give up my simple happy life for a few years of hustle for a promised better life?

Between looking for side hustles to “optimise my weekends” and job hunting for jobs that have better potential, I don’t know the answer. I do feel in my bones though that simple happiness should be something we cherish and value the answer to the questions I mentioned initially could simple be I don’t know but I’m happy where I am, I’ve not found the one yet and I’m not in a rush, I’m saving and looking at my options, I love my parents and they’re happy enough to have me stay.

I’m not sure if my answer is right, maybe once the applications are done and through some miracle I’ll be accepted maybe my mind will change but for now this is a start of a journey of questions for an (almost)30.