29 and feel very lost with no career - advice?

I've been struggling lately with my mental health for a variety of reasons. One thing that's heavy on my mind is my career. I'm 29 and live at home and incredibly thankful for that and love my mum/step dad and know they'll always support me. But I've been a financial burden my whole life. I did a BA English from 2016 to 2019 and MA English 2019 to 2021. I have had the exact same job in that entire time, freelance transcription work for the same company. I enjoyed it as an opportunity to have money on the side especially at university and it enabled me to travel too in 2023 which was amazing. But the pay is poor. It's enough whereby I have been able to have a fun and enjoyable twenties in many ways but it's poor and always has been, it's not a sustainable income. I have been just feeling very down lately at not carving out a career for myself. I feel like I'm majorly holding myself back from true independence due to this, in terms of maybe leaving home eventually, dating etc. Even hobby opportunities are stunted by it.

I'm feeling stagnant and sad about where my friends are in life, even though I'm proud of them. I've been looking at doing a free Harvard software dev course then taking that into a bootcamp next year because I'm just horribly lost about to what to pursue at all and think possibly this could be a route to at least try but it's hard not to be defeatist reading stuff about tech sector online. I don't have grand salary ambitions in the short term - I'd just love to have a solid salary for once in my life.

If anyone can help me with these concerns it'd be greatly appreciated. I'm very down about this. I think I'm probably going through depression at the moment brought about from other things too but it's meant I'm contemplating the career stuff hard. I generally live a happy and healthy life and have immense privilege but I have felt I've become so complacent.

Posted Dec 6, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

10
Loading comments…