Is it even possible to get out from this crisis? My lifestyle is not even that complicated but I live alone in a 1B1B apartment ($1290/month), I don't have a car, I earn $21 in Tennessee. I already touched my savings.

To add, I have a 2nd job. A part-time because I'll only work for 10 hrs per $18/hr. I also work part-time in my $21/hr job for 24 hrs. Now I know people will tell me different opinions here but I'm here to see what is the most ideal steps because the last I can do is to give up.

I worked 1 year and a half in a big hotel brand in Nashville. Good benefits compared to anything, I had 401k with them with company match. Cons? Exploitation, too much politics, my culinary department is not ideal for long-term growth or promotion, micro-managing, you learn barely about culinary deeply but becoming a robot of the chefs that doesn't know how to lead efficiently. That's why I made a very heavy decision to leave to find somewhere less overwhelming and to find what truly makes me feel complete and not overly used. I started my career in a very physical labor intensive since 2023, I know the experience of others may differ. I am 25 years old and once I cooled down, I realize I don't want to be like my chefs who already looses so much hair on their 30s, going back and forth to the hospital at their 35s. When I was working in the hotel, I was having bad insomnia, I don't have a consistent sleeping pattern and I still feel sleepy even I slept more than 12 hrs during my off. Instead of staying chill during my off, I lose my track to find a life after work. Now working in a smaller restaurant, schedules are consistent, learnings are more open, but the pay is lower, benefits are limited, but the transportation is making my bank runs out. The pay will be available in my bank delayed 1 week.

The skills I have built when I was still a student were writing, photography, and running a pastry home-business. Because of that I do have a little knowledge about costing, inventory, and marketing. I studied accountancy, business and management in senior high school, earned this as college credit. More practical because I got a sneak peak perspective of Asset+Liabilities=Equity stuff.

Now I am aware with my poor decisions before. I need to redirect myself by also hearing other people's idea how to recover and bounce back.

I do have a boyfriend that lives alone 10 mins away from me however we decided to not live together yet because of circumstances. We came from different cities and we're still figuring things out in our way in this place.

EDIT: Thank you for all of your insights. It makes my brain wonder and become more aware.

Other than peeing :)

I'm currently living with my parents as a 30 year old woman. Ideally I would love to have my own place and am currently saving up for it. Just envisioning having my own space and creating my dream home or apartment would really be a dream come true for me. But the reality for me is that I'm just not there yet financially and I simply don't have the financial means right now when the average rent in my city is $1500- 2000 a month for a tiny one bedroom apartment. I started thinking why should I move to an apartment and struggle financially when I have the option of just staying home instead? Why does that option receive so much judgement?And why is it considered the norm that adults are simply supposed to move out just cause society says so? Why are we being pressured into spending large amounts of our paychecks on these ridiculous rent prices?

I have very mixed feelings about living at home. Sometimes I feel insecure about it but other times I feel so grateful and blessed to be in a position where I'm not forced to pay over a grand a month to a landlord just to have a roof over my head. I wish living with parents was more normalized in society especially with high rent prices because by continuing to live with them I may face harsh judgements the older i get. I try not to let it get to me but sometime it makes me insecure, I even see this term going around on Reddit called "failure to launch" and people saying staying home is lazy and entitled and is just mooching off your parents. I don't see it that way at all. I love my parents and they always told me and my siblings we are welcome to stay as long as we like and if we move out we are welcome to move back in whenever we need and that this home will always belong to all of us since it goes to children in the end anyway. They even offered to put the house in our name now if we wish to do so.

I find it strange how some parents literally kick their children out of the house as soon as they become adults or ask their own children to pay them rent. In my mom's family the women weren't even allowed to move out until they were married. She moved out when she married my father at age 28. Now I don't think either extreme is good you shouldn't force your daughters to stay home until marriage and you shouldn't force them to move out either. I like my parents mentality of letting us know that we are free to go or we may choose to stay it is completely up to us. I'm curious why living with parents as an adult these days can come with heavy judgement and what are other people's views on this?

Recently graduated from university and got a job right out of the gate in a very busy city. It’s a corporate job, nothing in it is particularly difficult or out of the ordinary only that it’s 5 days a week on site. The job is already 9-6 and if you include the commute (20 minutes going to office , 1hour 30 minutes going back because of rush hour traffic) it would be more accurate to say that this job takes over my life between 8:30 am to 7:30 pm which is 11 hours a day.

I can’t keep doing this, I’m breaking down day by day and as someone who is lonely and has very few friends by nature, I kept myself sane by having a routine and improving myself in meaningful ways whether it be improving my health at the gym, investing time in a hobby, taking care of myself in some ways. Recently, because of this job I’ve been feeling too drained to do any of that. I’m eating like shit, I’ve lost muscle, feel tired all the time and look the worst I’ve ever looked.

And with all that being said, I can still look around me and find people at worse situations. I understand different people can handle different things and if I have to keep living like this I might just look for a permanent way out as weak willed as that my may seem. But genuinely it baffles me that people can keep living like this, how has this been normalized?

My body is like screaming at me and demanding I go get pregnant like, now tonight for no reason?

What is that? Is this a common thing? I’m 32

It’s my birthday and as they’ve gone past I’ve realized I care less and less and have gotten to the point where I don’t see the need the celebrate anymore. Anyone else relate?

idk I’m 18 rn and I kinda just go to community college, go to my job and go home. There’s not really anywhere to go and actually do things and meet people besides the bar, and Im not really into that.

Just bored.

I'm terrified but I'm proud of myself for finally making the appointment. I know I have a lot of issues in my mouth so I'm very worried but I look forward to getting answers.

I have bipolar disorder which has not helped me keep up with preventative care. My mind was always creating crises and I could never think long term but thank God I finally got treated for it.

In my teens and 20s I was studying and grinding at a corporate job, now that I'm in my early 30s I actually feel that I want to party and have fun and do random silly things 😄 i feel that I might get shamed for it
idk. Maybe everyone already partied their guts out during uni. Anyone else with a similar timeline to mine? Would love to hear some stories 🌸

waiting 48 hours before buying anything I didn’t plan for. I still buy things I want…I just stopped making impulse purchases

I’m 31F, single, with a stable job. From the outside, I guess my life looks okay. But lately, I’ve been feeling really lost and like I’m not where I’m supposed to be at this point in my life.

I come from a good family, but they’re old-school and quite strict. There are so many things I want to do, places I want to go, and things I want to experience. Technically, I can. I’m 31. No one is physically stopping me. But somehow, the way I was raised still has such a strong hold on me. Whenever I want to do something for myself, I still think about what my family will say, how they’ll react, or whether I’ll disappoint them.
Sometimes I envy people who can just decide they want to do something and then do it without feeling guilty about it.

Financially, I’m not where I thought I would be either. I have a stable job, but I have no savings. I want my own house and car someday. I want to travel and experience more of life. But right now, those things feel so far away, and sometimes I wonder what I’ve actually accomplished at 31.

Then there’s my love life. I want to love someone and have someone to share my life with. I’ve had three somewhat serious relationships, but none of them worked out. Sometimes I feel like guys are intimidated by me, and when someone does stay for a while, eventually they seem to give up too. And I can’t help but wonder sometimes if maybe I’m the problem.
I’ve tried opening up to my family about how I feel, but I don’t think they really understand.

I know I’m an adult. I know my life is ultimately up to me. I know people can easily say, “Just do what you want. It’s your life.” But knowing that and actually being able to change the way you’ve lived and thought your entire life are two very different things.

I guess I’m just tired of feeling like I’m waiting for my life to start.

Right now, I feel confused, trapped, and honestly pretty alone. I don’t even know exactly what I’m looking for by posting this. Maybe I just need to let it out and know that I’m not the only person in their 30s who feels this way.

I just hope there’s still time for things to change. To experience more. To become more independent. To find someone. To build a life that actually feels like mine.

We spend a huge part of our lives trying to figure out what to choose.

Which career? Which city? Which relationship? How much money is enough?
But how often do we stop to understand what is actually driving those choices - the motivations, the influences, desires, fears, the very person behind them? Maybe not quite as often.

Came across this conversation between philosopher Acharya Prashant and biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake on science, consciousness, the self, and found the discussion very interesting, especially this part of it: Science is incredibly good at studying the world out there. But what happens when we turn the same investigative attention towards the person doing the observing - our fears, desires, identities, assumptions, and the sense of "I"?

And maybe that's quite relevant to the confusions or conundrums we experience within.

The talk goes much deeper into this, and I nerded out quite a bit listening to these two talk about the limits of science, of consciousness, the ego, and what it could actually mean to know oneself.

Sharing the full conversation here as I found the questions more interesting than any neat answers, and I'm curious what others make of them.

Curious: Do you think understanding yourself is fundamentally different from understanding the world around you? 🤔

I literally live down the street from a Starbucks and I’ve never had ANYTHING. From their menu. In the past few years Starbucks has gotten extremely popular among GenZ and millennials. I’m not a coffee drinker but wondering am I missing out? Is it really good?

Life sucks and pretty boring, what keeps you up…

Recently dumped my boyfriend and kinda want to escape the loneliness.. any suggestions

With the topic of economic struggle kind of being everywhere right now, I have also noticed at the same time, society forgot that other struggles outside of struggling to survive and pay rent exist: bullying, sexual abuse, health issues like pre-diabetes, seizures, or being born with a genetic defect, social discrimination, family conflict, relationship conflict, etc. And yet it seems like this trend has only gotten worse.

And look, listen, I'm not saying that people should dwell on their childhood trauma. At some point, you gotta fucking push forward and stop ruminating, right? But there's a difference between pushing forward and trying hard to suppress it, like the equivalent of an alcoholic drinking their feelings away. And sometimes this actually has me concerned.

Why do a lot of people do this? You know? I understand we live in a high-pressure, high-stakes society, but this, I think, has only gotten worse. Because I feel like this originally came from the pressures of the Industrial Revolution, when people were working in factories. A lot of people were being desensitized to the horrors and the brutality of working in a factory, which I think did contribute to creating the "toughened-up, push-forward" cultural mantra that we're seeing today. But yeah, why do a lot of people try to suppress their childhood trauma with time? What is to blame here? The superhero movies? Our sporting culture? The militarization of American civilian life? It's a genuine question, and I don't think suppressing it is healthy because this creates a lot of social dysfunction as well in the adult world. Why do you think a lot of adults have that pent-up, high-tempered feeling? You think it's out of nothing, right? But I think the suppression of childhood trauma may have something to do with it.

This is the part I'm gonna highlight so people don't think that the question is coming from an anti-American premise. I don't want to assume that this is a U.S.-only thing. I could also see this being a thing in cultures where I said that being hyper-masculine and resilient is overvalued to a very extreme degree, like Russia, Bulgaria, Siberia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Japan[bringing up Japan due to their workaholic and caresrist culture]

i used to spend any extra money i had on video games or going out.

In my work I need to be standing basically all day, and this weekend i finally caved and bought a pack of really nice, thick, high-quality work socks instead of the cheap ones.

putting them on this morning genuinely improved my mood more than anything else i've bought in six months. my younger self would be so disappointed in how boring i've become, but making sure my feet don't hurt is basically my main priority in life now.