Anyone else feel that you have nothing to look forward to?

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Bataar
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30 Jun 2010, 12:18 am

Other than simple, fun event type things like a vacation or trip, but I mean major life events. I don't look forward to falling in love, getting married, and starting a family. I don't look forward to buying my own house someday and getting my own property. I don't look forward to a good career that will afford me to enjoy life and get the most out of it. It's not that I don't honestly want those things, but I can't see a realistic way for them to ever happen. I hear people my age, or even quite a bit younger talking about buying a house, investing money, getting ready to ask their significant other to marry them, etc and it's just very depressing. Things that a lot of people just take for granted are things that I don't even bother looking forward to.



Darkword
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30 Jun 2010, 12:23 am

In other words.

mo money, mo people, mo problems.

but in all seriousness I totally agree. The future holds little that I want. Nonetheless I'd never opt to stay in the past. Which I know you didn't say, but I feel like that's what a lot of people resort to. I'm looking for alternatives all the time.



pbcoll
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30 Jun 2010, 12:27 am

I feel the same, word by word. I see my peers getting married, having children, etc, but that sort of thing is a luxury that is not for me. I said it to someone who was very troubled to hear it: I no longer have any illusions, neither for my personal nor my professional life.


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astaut
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30 Jun 2010, 12:40 am

I look forward to stuff, just often not the same stuff as other people. Like as an early teen I looked forward to college waaay more than my peers. I still am more excited about college, grad work, and a career instead of marriage, babies, etc like a lot of females are.


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Pistonhead
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30 Jun 2010, 12:42 am

I feel exactly the same.



Todesking
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30 Jun 2010, 12:45 am

Try being in your forties laid off with no ability to do a good job interview. I have never gotten a job from interviewing someone either got me in or I was at the right place at the right time. I was going to do a job training program but I did not got any grant money to take the course so I will wait until the winter to take it when I might be able to get a grant. I do not want to pay $3,000.00 dollars for course only to fail at it or not be able to get a job in that field. :roll:

No money + no car + no job = No girlfriend some future :(



Last edited by Todesking on 30 Jun 2010, 12:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

conundrum
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30 Jun 2010, 12:46 am

Darkword wrote:
The future holds little that I want. Nonetheless I'd never opt to stay in the past.


That sounds like living in the present, which on its own is a real achievement. :)


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30 Jun 2010, 1:24 am

Nup no way, I have everything to look forward to because I know that no matter what I'll never stop trying to achieve the things I want out of life. :D And even if I fail at anything I will have had all the satisfaction of having made a damn good effort along the way.

Life is the journey, not the destination. And the journey is in your hands, no matter how much you convince yourself otherwise.

If you're feeling a bit down and everything just seems overwhelming I think a good place to start is to aim for the career and the house. These things are a lot more easily achievable for an aspie than relationships and marriage. To find a career or even a good job, you just need to be determined and persistent. I really stick by this. If you get turned down at 10 job interviews, just go to 100 more. If you can't get through that 100, sign up for a job interview social skills course of some sort. If you don't have the necessary qualifications, go out and get those damn qualifications. That's the great thing about living in a first world country, every person has the opportunity to get the qualifications they want if they are determined enough and work hard enough. Seriously, you've just got to keep at it, and you will get there eventually. Because over time you will learn and improve your job seeking skills (that's pretty much a guarantee) until eventually you get to the stage where you can get into that job you want.

As far as putting down money for a house goes, the best advice I can give you is to go to financial property advice type seminars. I know here in Australia they're being held all the time and admission is free!! To initially buy a house, all you need to do is get a loan for the deposit, then you find a cheap affordable house with several rooms, and have one room to yourself while renting the other rooms out to tenants. Then you pay off your bank loan with the rental income you get from the tenants. Eventually you will be able to afford to get another loan, and you use this to buy a second house, and so on. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but that's a basic overview of how property investment works. Anyone can do it, all you need to have is the know how - which these days is pretty easy to come by. My mum started off dirt poor and managed to become wealthy just by doing the sort of thing I described to you. You don't need to have heaps of money to be able to get your own house.

What I'm trying to say, in a long and convoluted way, is that AS or not your life is in your own hands, and your life is what you make of it. All you really need to succeed in life is determination, a positive outlook, and get up and go.

I may end up being a massive failure at relationships but it doesn't mean I won't try and try smart, and it doesn't mean I won't succeed in other areas where hard work can pay off.


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Roman
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30 Jun 2010, 1:33 am

My life time goal is to become a physicist. So, whenever I feel that I don't have much chance in my next step towards that goal (like now) I feel the way you do.

As far as marrying and buying a house, these things scare me. Yes I want a "girlfriend" with a potential of marriage, but the actual marriage I want postponned indefinitely. I also feel I made a mistake that in the past, when I was obsessed about never being able to get anyone to love me, I thought that "girlfriend" is part of definition of my happiness. Wrong. I now know I can get a girlfriend -- it would just take a lot longer than for anyone else. But if I get behind on career, then no it can't be fixed. Girlfriends come and go, but where I am in my career path stays with me. Too bad I didn't realize this simple fact until may be a year ago.



sgrannel
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30 Jun 2010, 2:09 am

I'm living life one day at a time, too. I have things to look forward to, such as completing patents and building things to see if they work. My priorities are to take care of my body and get things set for the future, which is why I exercise, save money, get dental work done, and get all the vaccines I can get. However, I don't have specific plans for marrying anyone or owning a house or having children. I didn't know what to expect on completion of the Ph.D. and looking back it's kind of a "so what?" thing. I'm not even sure I will stay in my home state after my current employment has reached a yet-to-be-defined state of completion, or if it will be continued here or elsewhere.



Logan5
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30 Jun 2010, 3:53 am

I used to have hopes and dreams, but they didn't work out. (How does that old expression go? "If you want to make the gods laugh, tell them your plans.")

Nowadays I look forward to sleep, and I wait for death.

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Bataar
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30 Jun 2010, 4:14 am

sunshower wrote:
If you're feeling a bit down and everything just seems overwhelming I think a good place to start is to aim for the career and the house. These things are a lot more easily achievable for an aspie than relationships and marriage. To find a career or even a good job, you just need to be determined and persistent. I really stick by this. If you get turned down at 10 job interviews, just go to 100 more. If you can't get through that 100, sign up for a job interview social skills course of some sort. If you don't have the necessary qualifications, go out and get those damn qualifications. That's the great thing about living in a first world country, every person has the opportunity to get the qualifications they want if they are determined enough and work hard enough. Seriously, you've just got to keep at it, and you will get there eventually. Because over time you will learn and improve your job seeking skills (that's pretty much a guarantee) until eventually you get to the stage where you can get into that job you want.

I'd love to figure out some way to improve my career. I just don't know what I'd want to do. Currently, I'm in IT, but I don't enjoy it. It's terribly boring and because of my experience level, I'm still at ground level so to speak. Because I find it so boring, it makes it very difficult to learn new things. If a subject is boring, I pretty much can't learn it. The information just doesn't stick, I can't focus on it, etc. My co workers are the kind of people that happily work 8+ hour days then go home and read up and spend hours of their "non work" time brushing up on new technology and new stuff that relates to our job. I don't do that. I couldn't stand to live my life like that. None of my "Aspie interests" can lead to a career, at least none that I can think of. I also have tens of thousands of dollars of debt from my student loans so even if I didn't have an intense hatred of school, it wouldn't be an option.

Quote:
As far as putting down money for a house goes, the best advice I can give you is to go to financial property advice type seminars. I know here in Australia they're being held all the time and admission is free!! To initially buy a house, all you need to do is get a loan for the deposit, then you find a cheap affordable house with several rooms, and have one room to yourself while renting the other rooms out to tenants. Then you pay off your bank loan with the rental income you get from the tenants. Eventually you will be able to afford to get another loan, and you use this to buy a second house, and so on. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but that's a basic overview of how property investment works. Anyone can do it, all you need to have is the know how - which these days is pretty easy to come by. My mum started off dirt poor and managed to become wealthy just by doing the sort of thing I described to you. You don't need to have heaps of money to be able to get your own house.

I'm years and years and even more years away from thinking about getting a house. With my current job, I pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. I pay my bills, pay my debts stash a little in savings and set some aside for a couple of hobbies. Until I get a job that pays quite a bit more than I'm currently making, owning a home is just a pipe dream. And, I don't see much opportunity to get a job with my skills/knowledge/experience that pays much more. I'll either have to get a better job or wait until my student loans are paid off, at least 10 more years. I don't have the credit rating to get a home loan and even if I did, I couldn't pay the bill. I'd have to have paying tenants prior to getting the first mortgage bill.



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30 Jun 2010, 4:18 am

I look forward to different things than other people. Most people care about getting married and starting a family, all that crap. I look forward to doing a job related to my obsessions and getting rich.



sunshower
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30 Jun 2010, 7:04 am

Bataar wrote:
sunshower wrote:
If you're feeling a bit down and everything just seems overwhelming I think a good place to start is to aim for the career and the house. These things are a lot more easily achievable for an aspie than relationships and marriage. To find a career or even a good job, you just need to be determined and persistent. I really stick by this. If you get turned down at 10 job interviews, just go to 100 more. If you can't get through that 100, sign up for a job interview social skills course of some sort. If you don't have the necessary qualifications, go out and get those damn qualifications. That's the great thing about living in a first world country, every person has the opportunity to get the qualifications they want if they are determined enough and work hard enough. Seriously, you've just got to keep at it, and you will get there eventually. Because over time you will learn and improve your job seeking skills (that's pretty much a guarantee) until eventually you get to the stage where you can get into that job you want.

I'd love to figure out some way to improve my career. I just don't know what I'd want to do. Currently, I'm in IT, but I don't enjoy it. It's terribly boring and because of my experience level, I'm still at ground level so to speak. Because I find it so boring, it makes it very difficult to learn new things. If a subject is boring, I pretty much can't learn it. The information just doesn't stick, I can't focus on it, etc. My co workers are the kind of people that happily work 8+ hour days then go home and read up and spend hours of their "non work" time brushing up on new technology and new stuff that relates to our job. I don't do that. I couldn't stand to live my life like that. None of my "Aspie interests" can lead to a career, at least none that I can think of. I also have tens of thousands of dollars of debt from my student loans so even if I didn't have an intense hatred of school, it wouldn't be an option.

Quote:
As far as putting down money for a house goes, the best advice I can give you is to go to financial property advice type seminars. I know here in Australia they're being held all the time and admission is free!! To initially buy a house, all you need to do is get a loan for the deposit, then you find a cheap affordable house with several rooms, and have one room to yourself while renting the other rooms out to tenants. Then you pay off your bank loan with the rental income you get from the tenants. Eventually you will be able to afford to get another loan, and you use this to buy a second house, and so on. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but that's a basic overview of how property investment works. Anyone can do it, all you need to have is the know how - which these days is pretty easy to come by. My mum started off dirt poor and managed to become wealthy just by doing the sort of thing I described to you. You don't need to have heaps of money to be able to get your own house.

I'm years and years and even more years away from thinking about getting a house. With my current job, I pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. I pay my bills, pay my debts stash a little in savings and set some aside for a couple of hobbies. Until I get a job that pays quite a bit more than I'm currently making, owning a home is just a pipe dream. And, I don't see much opportunity to get a job with my skills/knowledge/experience that pays much more. I'll either have to get a better job or wait until my student loans are paid off, at least 10 more years. I don't have the credit rating to get a home loan and even if I did, I couldn't pay the bill. I'd have to have paying tenants prior to getting the first mortgage bill.


As far as the house situation, I don't know enough about your situation, the American property market, or have enough financial knowledge (yet) to really give more advice, but I would still advise you to consider attending a free seminar or two, even if you don't currently think there's any way out of your situation.

As far as the job goes, I can actually give you some advice there. Have you ever considered volunteering in your spare time (whenever you can squidge in the time) and trying different things out? Maybe even try really random things you've never considered before and maybe you'll find you like it? Personally I never thought I'd have any interest in Acting when I was younger, but I tried it out in high school and much to my surprise found out I loved it. These last few uni holidays I have purposefully worked at a range of different jobs to see what I like, and have learned that I hate retail but actually don't mind hospitality too much. The only way to check out other options is to get out there and try things. It's never too late to change careers, or try new things. As far as all the schooling stuff goes, I'm not sure how the system works for you, so I can't give much advice regarding your student debt. However, there are all kinds of different courses and qualifications you can do, which range in cost and in time. You say now that you hate schooling, but if you found a job/profession you actually really liked/loved, maybe you'd find you felt differently about it.


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Brainfre3ze_93
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30 Jun 2010, 7:23 am

A little bit for me, to be honest I wouldn't mind just living in open spaces with no fences at all. ( possibly somewhere in the mountains ) " rough it out " 8) for the rest of my life.