I’m 26 and feel stuck and lost
I’m going to start this off by saying I am an extremely privileged individual. I am white, male, and have a well paying job. I work for a mortgage company in their Legal department where my job is half attorney contact for foreclosing on properties and the other half in a phone queue negotiating with customers that are in foreclosure to potentially save their home. It’s a hard job but pays extremely well with tons of bonuses. I am great at what I do, but I can’t stand what I do. Speaking with extremely emotional customers on the phone while trying to juggle so many emails and tasks is taking a toll on my mental health. Not to mention the workload that gets behind with incredibly high call volume days. I want to find another job but finding anything else that won’t put so much mental/emotional strain on me without taking a massive pay cut feels impossible. I can’t afford to make less than I do, and unfortunately I made the terrible mistake of not choosing a specific major in college and didn’t continue my education after getting my Associates Degree of General Arts. No student loans has been great (state sponsored tuition program) but not having any official education of specific skills or topics makes applying for other departments in-house or to positions in other companies feel like non-starters as each one would put me in starter positions making significantly less than I do now. I feel so stuck, and have no idea what I want to do. I could likely afford to go back to school, but I don’t think I could even bear the mental destruction that it would wrought on me at the same time as working in this position. I just got denied for a leader position that would have met my current pay that I was truly hopeful for, I even worked in the department prior and did a great job. Now I just feel like I have no goal in sight.
I have a well paying job, own a home, have a spouse with good income as well, even a newer car that is completely paid off now, but professionally I feel like every day is just me dragging myself to the finish line and feel helpless in finding any sort of direction that doesn’t have an outcome where I don’t offload the stress to another part of my life.
Part of me wants to yell at how whiny I sound and just beat through the stress of schooling for something specific, but I’m scared that I’ll still be sitting here in the same predicament, but then with student loans to add on and feeling even more mentally destroyed.
Posted Jul 20, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC · locked