I never had a plan for my life. My dad is an engineer and inherited a lot of his engineer-brain, but I've always been more creative. The mixture of those two different elements has resulted in a varied set of skills and passions. I've watched my dad love his work every day. He still works and he still loves it today, at 70 years old. That's all I want. To do something I love and hopefully make a decent amount of money from it so I can live without too many restrictions and travel.

I went through that same phase you mention right before I dropped out of film school. I had taken far too much on and couldn't keep up. I felt that everything I did was worthless and unproductive and I was struggling to stay afloat. I pride myself on doing work well and I wasn't doing anything well at that point.

I made a hard decision between focusing on school/classes or focusing on the work I was doing outside of school - editing and producing a senior thesis films. Those are the things I truly enjoyed and wanted to dedicate 110% of my time and energy to, but the world told me I needed a degree to survive. The decision to drop out, so far, has been the best one for me. Right now I'm looking for a new job and I get that little sinking feeling every time a job demands I have a BA or BS.

After dropping out, I worked and lived in NYC for another year and a half - splitting my time between working with my peers on their films and freelancing video services for money. I split with my ex, took off to Australia for 3 months with the money I had saved and security deposit from the apartment, drank and had fun, returned to the states, and landed a position at a company I freelanced for in college. In that position I was immediately expected to wear hats beyond shooting/editing product videos.

So, I taught myself HTML/CSS, learned Illustrator, took a graphic design course, took another graphic design course, and now take a javascript/jquery course. If you had told me when I was in Australia that I would be building Android apps and websites in 2 years, I would have laughed in your face. Shit changes. But I still do things I love - I love creating shit that didn't exist before. I love telling stories. I love solving problems. The medium is the only thing that has changed.

I have the beginnings of a good career, amazing friends, a kickass apartment, and an enormous passion for learning new things, solving problems, and being challenged by my work.

Unfortunately, my current job doesn't challenge me like it used to, hence the desire for a new job. We'll see where that ends up. My 9-5 is killing me but I'm lucky enough to have a string freelance work keeping me challenged and happy and in control.

So to answer your questions - no I still don't know what I want to do with my life. I could go get a producing job or a design job or a web dev job and figure out how to be successful in any of those positions. They would all make me happy too. It's never to late to change and you need to change to be competitive today. Change fast. Do what you love. Figure out how to make it work for you. Have a savings account and emergency fund. That's it.

Somewhat. I'm much closer than I have been at least. I have an engineering job that is enjoyable, as a full-time intern. I'm also living in an area that I like living in (Greater Boston area). Then once this is done, I have a full year of undergraduate education left. That's when the interesting part comes in. I'm completely torn on if I want to continue as an Engineer post-college, or try and find my way into a managerial position or go in the direction of Higher Education in the form of Student Affairs. I do a lot of of that sort of work when I'm at college, and absolutely love it. There's something much more elegant and usually more interesting about working more with people than products. But I'm not sure if it's too late to seriously pursue that or if it's even worth pursuing in today's age.

I've also pretty much decided that for the immediate future after college I would prefer to live directly in a city. Some place like Cambridge/Somerville or Portland, ME, or even in the pacific northwest would be really interesting to live in. A place where I can be immersed in the local arts, music, and culture scene and be an active participant in them, like I am when I'm at college. I wouldn't even mind staying in Rochester after college, I love that city and have come to meet a lot of interesting people. Granted, I do spend a bit too much time focusing on...everything at the same time, which has at times impacted my health and relationship, but I think I've learned how to reach a happy medium on that. The big part about living in a city is that it would best allow me to continue to pursue my interest in radio (I DJ and do some business development work), and music in general (my roommates and I run a record label and make music as well). As for the label, it's a start but I want so much more out of that. I have a burning desire for it to become something that people all over the start and northeast know of (at least those that are heavily invested in music), and I want it to really develop a music scene in a place that is fragmented. The people in these scenes are generally awesome people. To think of living in some vanilla suburb is boring to me.

I've also recently taken to learning HTML/CSS, and plan on learning Python and Javascript because they seem interesting to me (insomniasexx, do you know of any good resources for really learning this stuff? I'd love to go beyond what's taught in codecademy.).

Right now I have an amazing girlfriend, great friends, a job that is okay, in an area that I like. But I still want so much more than that. I want to keep this great relationship and these friends, but at the same time I want a job where I am the leader, not a follower or a subservient to a project manager. I want to create my work, and shape my world in a vision that I see fit. That's where the managerial and/or Higher Education work comes into play. I want to continually be challenged, and live a thriving and interesting social life where I can walk out of my place and be immersed in something more than myself.

First of all: it's never too late to change. But to answer the "what I'm doing" question: right now I'm looking for a new job, and I'm involving myself locally. While doing so I try to figure out and work on projects that feed the inventor within. I try to avoid using computers for those, as a break from the last 10 years or so of computering.

More personally, my friendships have improved greatly and I tend to have a potential date or two in the works. Sort of. Dating is hard!

Do you know what you want to do in life? Is it okay to not know?

Yesterday I traveled back home by train. When I arrived and walked from the station home, an evangelist approached me. Normally, I politely ignore people approaching me but he asked me whether I thought I had a destiny in life. He meant whether God had a destiny for me, but my views on religion align with TAA's ideas and not with a deity so I said no.

I ended up having a nice philosophical mini-debate with the guy over the definition of God and the grandness of the cosmos but that opening question kinda stuck with me. Removing God from the equation, I took the question as 'do I think I have a goal in life' and I think that's very similar to the questions you're asking.

Frankly, I don't think I do. It is easy to look back at my life thus far and find a pattern, some kind of build up, as I've been lucky enough to see a rising trend in the quality of life. I know this year will be filled with more amazing experiences, perspectives and adventures than the last and I'm tempted to say it's building up to something great, my goal in life, but that would be a fallacy.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Life has endless possibilities, daunting at first but liberating in the end. I don't know what the hell I'll be doing in two years, but is that really that bad? While it is good to have a general idea of where you might want to go, I know I wouldn't be happy if I had a track laid down for me. A lot of friends of mine are in med school and are tied to at least 7 more years of school and at least 10 more to repay their loans. Suffocating, really: for them, the only barrier between now and the future is the passage of time. They get the comfort of a predictable future but at the cost of their liberty. Easier, yes, better? I think not. As long as I get to keep doing interesting / fun / amazing things, I'm good. That is the general direction I'll be heading, filling out the details as I go.

Trying to acquire a lot of skills.

For most of my life I've been very lazy and unmotivated, but as I'm coming towards the end of my time at university I've been hit with the weight and the sudden realization that things may not always work out in the end. A lot of things have changed recently: my parents have been struggling with a few things(bad), I'm in a good relationship now (good) and I'm soon to be living independently (good and bad). These things have made me realize how lucky I am to be where I am, so I'm trying to get a job and properly get my ass on track.

Hubski, what are you doing with your life?

Drifting along. Painfully being dragged to the dream I had as a kid.

Are you where you want to be?

Where 12 year old me wanted to be? Absolutely. Where 20 year old me wants to be? Not even close.

Is there something that you want to change?

Lots of things. Many of which require waiting. Others require me to get off my lazy ass. And others require pure luck.

Do you know what you want to do in life?

Not a damn clue. Be happy? Is that an answer?

Is it okay to not know?

I don't think so. Not knowing means I have nothing to chase ruthlessly. And as such, I chase reddit. Or Facebook. Or Hubski. Spinning my wheels. The direction I'm pointed I don't really care to go in, but I can't see what direction I do want to go in. Or if there is even a worthwhile direction at all.

How do you go about figuring out what it is that you want?

No clue.

Is it ever too late to change?

Nope. You can change at any time.

I am cool with being a midsize tetrapod, and I have reached the point that I no longer reproaching myself for all the things I might have done better. But then, discarding the idea that I have free will helps!

If you want some encouraging words though, I have them. I languished in existential angst for years. Decades. Many decades. It is possible to get over it. Be patient, and don't be too hard on yourself. There are quick ways, but they involve cultivating problems that are bigger and more immediate than malaise. A life threatening illness does it for some.

My comment is going to sound out of place here… I think I'm a lot older than most commenting so far.

What are you doing with your life?

Are you where you want to be?

Is there something that you want to change?

Do you know what you want to do in life?

Is it okay to not know?

How do you go about figuring out what it is that you want?

Is it ever too late to change?

Just a few questions to ponder. I feel stuck in a state of the unknown right now and I'd like to hear from some other people.

Once I figure that out I'll let you know.

I sure hope I'm going to be an English teacher in a suburban high school. I'm well on track with my schooling- if everything continues smoothly, I'll be golden. I'll live in the city and enjoy the metropolitan scene that I love so much, and I'll commute about twenty minutes to the school I work at. If I have the time, maybe I'll even coach too. All of this is assuming that I get a job after graduation-if not, I guess I'll move back in with my parents until I do.

I figured out what I wanted slowly and through a lot of internal conflict. I resisted teaching and even the study of English for a long time, because the work is difficult, the pay isn't incredible, and everyone is always talking down about the humanities. But I found that when I tried to pursue other things, I was just not happy, and at the end of the day, that's what matters, right? I did a placement for a semester in a middle school English classroom and I loved it. I am passionate about what I study and I'm having the time of my life doing it.

To pursue anything else at this point seems ridiculous, and I keep on finding more and more practical value in what I study. The humanities are so important to mankind. You won't build a suspension bridge or cure cancer with books, but, by God, you can teach people that we're really all the same. We are all humans; we all want and need the same things. We struggle with the same fears and insecurities. It's a beautiful thing to study and promote, and in an age where the world keeps getting smaller and smaller, the humanities will be critical in ensuring that people continue to treat each other like people.

Talk to your parents, your friends, a counselor or adviser, those to whom you look up and who are doing what they love. Find a way to make money with the things you love to do, and hopefully the rest will take care of itself. That sounds optimistic, and maybe I'm not established enough yet in a career to give that advice, but it's what has worked so far for me.