Asklemmy

Plans never go the way you expect them too. Also, this is the most vague post I've ever seen in my life. You said a lot of words without really saying much.

Life is pretty wild.
You can literally do anything

Like, you can straight up choose the wrong career, or become a hardcore alcoholic by the time you're 30, and no one can really stop you.
It's pretty scary, but also pretty liberating to think about.

"Life is what happens while you're making other plans," as they say. The future is important, but so is the now.

This happened to me. I got a PhD and expected to be able to get a tenure track job in academia. Sure, it's hard. But it wouldn't be me that failed at it, right? Wrong. Three years later, no job, scraping by on adjunct work.

I went back to law school. Sometimes you have to redefine your life in a way that gives you new opportunities. Does it still hurt that I couldn't get my dream job? Yeah, but I have a lot of good I can do for the world in other ways, and I'm not going to let that dream's death prevent me from doing it.

Planning is well and good but your present self should be driving towards your future, not the other way around which is how this kind of feels. In some ways it strike me that you seemed to see yourself as the future state person that you wanted to be rather than who you are. It may be worth taking a step back to try and rediscover who you really are "right now" as a person, not what you think or thought you wanted to be, if the plan has been in place that long you may find that at heart you just aren't in the same headspace as the you from all those years ago. With that done, reassess what the current you wants and set out to "make" those things happen, don't trust for the new plan to just natural play out, each thing should at least be treated like its going to take effort. If getting a family together is a thing and really important, don't just hang out at bars waiting for a connection to happen. Get on apps and sites and date like it's your 2nd job. Building on that as an example, if you're a halfway decent person you will find somebody, but it might still be person 112 and you have to put in the work to get through the first 111 to get to them.

Wow, why is it so hard for you to say what the problem is? It's going to be a bit hard to get any advice.

I assume you wanted children but are sterile? You can still adopt. Even if that's not what you mean, there are always alternatives in some way that let you achieve what you want, maybe not exactly like you imagined it, but a similar thing.

Everyone else already has said the "general" stuff that can be said without getting any more information from you. If you really want help, you should be ready to share some more information and answer questions people have, as well as answer people's comments with sharing your true thoughts, not holding back like you did in your main post.

In the end, how do you get over this? You understand rationally that you can never plan the future 100%. You understand that once people achieve a goal/plan, they don't become happy, they just try to achieve a new goal/plan. To become happy, you have to be happy with what you currently have, no matter what that is.

You don't have to have an identity to live. Identity is irrelevant. It's a thought-up human concept that in the grand scheme of things has no meaning. What does it matter what your identity was 100 years from now? 1000 years from now? A million years from now?

And once you rationally understand these things, you have to convince your subconscious of them as well, which is much harder and requires lots of practice.

Something about your plans was very appealing to you. What about them gave you a sense of identity? Why those plans specifically? Try to figure that out: be very specific, write it down even, and discuss it with people. Once you figure out the driving force behind your plans, use that to guide you.

I'm really, truly not trying to be flippant. But welcome to the first taste of adulthood. What you plan for your life and what your life becomes are very different things. I am not who I expected to be. I am not in the career I expected. I don't have the same interests I expected, and I only have like 2 friendships from my high school days that I've really maintained.

But the thing is, none of that is necessarily bad. I enjoy my job, but as a high schooler "municipal development" wasn't a career to dream about, even though it can be very satisfying.

I have different friends and interests, but they're not worse. It's just that the world broadens as you age.

You can't really know who you are until the training wheels come off. That's where you're headed by the sound of it. Is it scary and stressful? Absolutely. But when you come out of it you'll be the person you are, not the person somebody expects you to be.

The 20s were an amazing time where everything in my life got flipped around more than once. Now that I'm a few decades past it, I can better appreciate how much I grew in that time.

I also miss having a more cooperative body.

I think something has gotten messed up in our culture that makes people obsess in an unhealthy way about identity. It's a natural concern for people in their twenties, but it gets exaggerated. Your identity is just who you really are and it is a life's work to get to know that and to develop it, and the possibilities are much broader than you can know, especially when you are awash in a culture that is selling you identities. Don't put yourself in a box or fit yourself into some mold by deciding on some 'identity'. Give yourself room and let it naturally develop.

Get yourself a good therapist. It is their job to help you answer these kinds of questions yourself.

Was your whole plan about having a family in your 20s? If not, then I don't see how the lack of a significant other matters. What career plans do you have? What interests do you have? Also, keep in mind that validation should come from within, you shouldn't let anyone (or their absence) define how you feel about yourself.

The only, really only, case in which you should plan that much into the future is when you're a gov / politician / business. Plans for the average person never work out

Some people learn about the limits of their control over events by meditating. Even when you stop trying to do anything, your body tries to do things and things change around you and you have the impulse to control things. Repeated exposure to this impulse eventually caused me to start laughing at how silly I was to assume that I was in control.

Maybe something like that could help you. Peace.

Plan as much as you want. Its nornal to feel uneasy about the unreliability of your plan. Dealing with uncertainty is difficult and many dont deal with it and spend life avoiding that feeling. Giving up on your plans is an option if you want.

Aim for your happy place of a neat and reliable plan. Handle failures to maintain your plan with grace and forgive yourself. Or get angry and double down on your efforts. Its all you friend. This is a life experience thing that comes to everyone who tries.

I can relate to this. I’m in my 40s now with quite a bit of hindsight.

When I was in my 20s I went to school in a creative field but with a science degree. I ended up getting through the program and earning my BS. However, I ultimately found that the field I was going into treated people poorly so I decided not to go forward with a career in it. Instead, I kept working in retail, where I had to get through school, and eventually worked my way up into management.

I now run a branch in a completely different field and am doing very well, have learned a ton, and have helped many people. It’s fulfilling and been good to me and my family. When I was deciding where life would take me, this wasn’t planned, but it’s probably 100x better than where I would be if I had chosen to go forward with my original plan.

Get into therapy, if possible. I've learned so much from therapy (and quality therapists (I'm old)), including building a healthier sense of self that was underdeveloped due to home life stuff when I was a kid. At 38, I was finally able to love myself, something I had thought impossible. A 21yo version of me wouldn't have been able to envision the me of today because it would seem impossible.

Maybe you only do therapy to help adjust to this one thing that you're asking about and then you're good. It sounds like you may not have the amount of baggage that I had. But I think it's an incredibly valuable and useful tool. The catch is having the right therapist. Be prepared to say that it isn't a good fit if you don't trust the person. I find that for each good therapist (three over ~30 years), I've had to meet with at least one, once two, who were a bad fit.

Good luck!

Plans are useless, just do whatever you feel at the moment. The important thing is to never regret and to always move on