I sent this thread to a friend of mine. He is an attorney and I am a CPA. We are going through a similar crisis, are 31 and have solid but boring jobs with similar income range as you. We don't have a hard time attracting/being with women though. If anything that is our strong point. That is not a brag it is just to point out that having women doesn't equate to happiness. His response is below. Sorry for the length...
"I hear it all the time from young attorneys.
I think our entire generation is burnt out.
Think about it: The pressure on us to be number one started way earlier in our lives than it did for our parents. I can remember as far back as middle school being told that I needed to work hard and get straight A’s in order to get into a good college.
Before I knew it, it was honors classes, AP classes, SAT prep classes, and courses offering college credit. None of which even existed in our parents’ time.
Even school athletics became another means of separating ourselves from the pack in the hopes of getting into a better college. Shit, the only reason I stayed on the wrestling team for all four years was to put it down on my college applications.
Community involvement, charities, student organizations; all were nothing more than a means of getting ahead of the other applicants. Nobody joined those clubs or volunteered for the organizations out of the kindness of their hearts. Sure, everyone toted the line of altruism, but everyone, at least our fellow future applicants, knew the true motivation behind all of it.
So we grew up with all this pressure to stand out and crush the competition. Sports weren’t fun because a loss meant more than a losing season, it meant one less accolade to place on the application which meant a smaller chance of getting into the elite schools. The true value of community service and community involvement was lost as well. All we were focused on was getting our names attached to as many projects as possible and getting the coveted letter of recommendation. Again, so we could pad the application.
I couldn’t even ball park how many days in high school (summer and during the school year) that started at 6:00 and ended at midnight. Between studying for classes, practicing for the team and working on service projects, I wouldn’t be surprised if 90 hour weeks weren’t the rule rather than the exception. And that’s only to get through high school. Then we had college, grad school and then some more grad school. Because, unlike our parents’ generation, a high school diploma won’t get you anything. Shoot, a bachelor’s degree is worthless now.
If you took the time we put into studying and testing and studying and testing and studying and testing and instead spent that time working for a major company, you would have worked your way all the way up the corporate ladder by now and been close to retirement ready. With no student loans crushing down on you. Which, thanks to the legislatures now in office (all of which hale from our parents’ generation) aren’t dischargeable. Ever. Not even in bankruptcy.
Then comes the slavery (pronounced “internship”
. Where the company owns you for two to three years and works you like a slave until you drop or quit or break down. At which point they replace you with another slave (pronounced “intern”
.
Should you be “lucky” enough to survive the internship hazing process and get a decent position paying decent money, you’re so run down and stressed out from the cumulative impact of the previous ten years that you have nothing left in the tank to keep you going until retirement. The system has gotten the better of you and all you want to do is quit and work a low stress, mindless job somewhere with nice scenery and warm weather.
This is a reality our parents and grandparents will never understand because they didn’t know real stress and pressure until they bought a house or had a family. Usually in their twenties or thirties. Our crippling stress began at 14."
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