Being 30 (very soon to be 31) and still being underemployed(barely making above minimum wage), needing to pay debt paid off, and stuck living with parents despite having a "useful" college degree really sucks ass and feels like a hole I'll never be able to dig out of.

Currently underemployed working a temp job completely unrelated to my degree (because no one else wants to hire me in this job market), have debt that needs to be paid off, stuck living with parents due to combination of subpar job market and skyrocketing cost of living, mother has stage 2 cancer with her treatment that will take up to 18 months, and just keep wasting my time applying for so many jobs even below my college degree requirement and still get rejected. There has been a long history of drama between my immediate family over bills and money, that I always try to avoid getting involved in but keep getting dragged into.

I'm at a point where I'm starting not to care much about life anymore and just going with the flow. I've accepted that my CS degree (that I took much longer than usual to complete due to many personal life circumstances the past several years) is utterly useless in this day and age and probably will never get me anywhere anytime soon.

Jobadvisor

This is a lot to be carrying at once — the job search grinding you down, debt, living situation, your mom's diagnosis, family money drama you keep getting pulled into. Any one of those is heavy. All together, "starting not to care much about life anymore" makes complete sense as a response, even though I want to gently flag that phrase and ask you to keep an eye on it in yourself.

Can I ask directly: when you say you're not caring much about life anymore, do you mean you're feeling worn down and checked out, or are you having thoughts of hurting yourself or not wanting to be alive? I'm not asking to categorize you — it just changes what's actually useful to say next.

If it's ever the second one, or gets there: 988 (call or text) is available 24/7 in the US, and if texting feels easier there's also the Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741. You don't have to be in immediate danger to use them; "I'm exhausted and going through the motions" counts too.

Setting that aside for a second — a few things stand out to me in what you wrote, not to fix them right now, but because I think they're worth naming:

Your degree isn't useless — the market right now is genuinely brutal for CS grads, especially early-career, and that's not a reflection of you or your choice of major. Entry-level tech hiring has been unusually bad for a couple years running. That's a labor market fact, not a verdict on your worth or your decisions.

The "going with the flow" feeling often isn't laziness or giving up — it's what happens when someone has been trying hard for a long time with too little payoff and too little support. It's a symptom of burnout and grief (and it sounds like you're grieving several things at once — the timeline you expected for your life, and your mom's health), not a character flaw.

Getting pulled into family financial drama while also trying to hold yourself together is its own kind of exhausting, separate from everything else.

I don't want to throw generic job-search tips at you right now if what's actually going on is closer to "I'm depleted and don't know how much longer I can keep white-knuckling this." So — where are you actually at with the not-caring thing? And separately, do you have anyone in your life right now who knows how much you're carrying, or has it mostly been you holding all of this alone?

I accidentally discovered I love this type of work. What careers are actually like this?

About 3-4 months ago I decided I was going to properly work on my food account. I always had the account, but I mostly shitposted and was never really into food.

Then one of my friends (who has an actual food account) invited me to a tasting event. From that event I saw the perks of being a foodie. Exclusive tastings, being treated really well, getting everything for free. I remember thinking wOW I actually really like this so I decided to take the account seriously and see if I could get invited to these things too.

I made a few posts about cafes and restaurants I'd actually been to because I figured businesses would need some proof that I was serious, and I cleaned up all my old ugly posts. After awhile I got tired of waiting, so I started reaching out to cafes that were already doing influencer marketing. My pitch was basically that I could create content for them directly without them having to go through a marketing agency. The selling point was that I'd give them free content that they'd otherwise have to pay a bigger creator or agency for.

The first month, maybe 2-3 out of every 10 places replied. I was SO excited because I genuinely never thought it would work. Over the next few months it slowly became a game. My first collab the food was probably worth less than $10. Then I started aiming for nicer restaurants because I realised that if I was going to spend an hour editing a video, I should maximise the value of my time. Every time I managed to get a bigger restaurant than the last one, I got this huge rush. Then I thought, why stop at food? LOL

I'm actually way more interested in travelling, museums, hotels, performances and activities anyway, so I used the exact same strategy. I paid for the first few experiences myself, posted them as proof that I was serious about making this kind of content, then started reaching out. Again, maybe 2-3 out of every 10 said yes. Every time I got a yes I got the thrill… At this point I’ve only done this locally and I thought why not try it overseas?? After all, different countries have different restaurants, hotels, attractions and tour operators, so I repeated the same process. Somehow it kept working (2-3 out of 10 say yes). Since then I've worked with restaurants, bars, hotels, attractions and tour operators whenever I travel. The more I do this, the more I've realised I'm addicted to the feeling of closing the deal. The bigger the brand or the newer the category, the bigger the thrill.

It doesn’t stop there and I realise once they say yes, it becomes another challenge. I start thinking about how I can produce the content as efficiently as possible. In the past I would take as long as I wanted but now my mind starts seeing it as a business (?) and I time myself editing, using AI (claude/ GPT) to speed up scripting, and see how much value I can get out of the time I've invested. At some point it stopped feeling like content creation and started feeling like running a business and I loved it…

Now if I'm travelling somewhere, I'll make a folder of restaurants, hotels and attractions I want to visit, then spend hours researching who to contact and building my pitch. If I'm meeting friends, I immediately start thinking whether I can fit a collaboration into those plans (it’s like working with a timeline since the date to meet is already scheduled and its a challenge to see if I can secure a cafe/ restaurant?). Whenever I'm scrolling social media or walking around town, my brain automatically goes, "I wonder if they'd be open to working together."

Also, another thing I didn't expect was how much I enjoy meeting the owners and founders of some of these places. Sometimes they come out to introduce themselves and tell me why they started the business, what challenges they've faced, or what they're trying to build. I truly love listening to their stories and it makes me inspired to share the content well and hope it goes viral?

Anyway, the thing is I'm not making money from this. If anything, it's just subsidising my lifestyle because I get free meals, hotels and activities. The thing I'm actually addicted to is the process - finding opportunities, writing the pitch, getting the yes, meeting interesting people and figuring out how to edit efficiently/ shorter amount of time. In fact if you asked my friend most would say I used to take terrible pictures and I’m someone who cared the least about what I’m eating. To me I’ve found “success”/ closed deals because I enjoyed that process more than the actual thing(?)

Anyway here’s why I'm posting this…
I just graduated from law school and in a few months I'll be starting work at a big law firm’s corporate team (yep they’re notorious for overworking). The thing is, I've never felt this level of excitement about law. I mean I’m okay with law (I did not study that hard but still got decent grades that landed me a pretty cushy big law job tbh I got it cause I’m good at talking/ researched the entire team etc all that but my grades r p bad for big law standard), but I've never caught myself thinking about it ALL DAY the way I do with this. I don't naturally spend my free time reading legal updates or looking for more legal work… Meanwhile, this collaboration thing is constantly on my mind. I genuinely look forward to it.

The more I think about it, the more I realise what I actually enjoy is identifying opportunities, persuading people to work with me, building relationships, and closing deals. I know becoming a partner in a law firm involves a lot of business development, and I think I'd probably enjoy that side of things. But I'm also not a particularly detail-oriented person, so I'm wondering whether there's another legal or corporate career that's more centred around this kind of work instead of years of technical legal work first.

Has anyone accidentally discovered they enjoyed something completely different from the career they were about to enter? And based on what I've described, are there careers that are basically this? I'm genuinely curious because this whole experience has made me question whether I'm walking into the right profession. I mean I talked to my parents and they’re traditional asian parents super against this idea and they think its best I stick to law and make partner/ do in house and at best do this account on the side. I know social media has a hype cycle so I’m not intending to ditch law for Instagram but I’m wondering if there are jobs adjacent to the kind of interests/ thrills ive listed. Thank you!

Jobadvisor

This is a really clear pattern, and it's worth naming precisely: you're not addicted to food or travel content. You're addicted to origination and closing — finding an opportunity that doesn't exist yet, building a pitch, getting a stranger to say yes, then executing efficiently against a deadline. The content is just the vehicle. That's a very specific and very marketable temperament, and it maps onto real careers much more directly than "law" does.

A few things point this out clearly in what you wrote:

You cold-pitch instead of waiting to be discovered — that's a hunter mentality, not a creator mentality.
The thrill scales with difficulty (bigger brand, new country, new category) — that's classic deal-closer psychology, the same thing that drives good salespeople and dealmakers.
Once the "yes" happens, you immediately optimize execution for efficiency — that's operator/business instinct layered on top of the sales instinct.
You genuinely enjoy founders' stories — you like the business, not just the product.
You said it yourself: you liked "closing deals" more than the actual experience.

That combination — origination, persuasion, relationship-building, low interest in deep technical detail work — points toward a specific cluster of careers:

Closest matches to what you described:

Business development / partnerships roles — literally what you're doing already, just for a company instead of yourself. Travel, hospitality, OTAs (Booking, Expedia, Airbnb), CPG, media, or agencies that do influencer/brand partnerships. You'd be signing hotels, venues, or brands instead of pitching them for yourself.
Executive search / recruiting — a shockingly good match people don't think of. It's cold outreach, pitching a role or a candidate, persuasion, closing, and it's entirely relationship-driven with almost no technical depth required. Legal recruiting specifically would let you use your law background without practicing.
Agency new-business / sales — the marketing agencies you're currently underselling would hire someone who's good at exactly what you're doing. Ad sales, sponsorship sales, and agency BD roles all run on the same "10 pitches, 2-3 yeses" math.
Deal sourcing in VC/PE — earlier-stage roles are often just origination: finding companies, getting a meeting, building relationships with founders. Less about spreadsheets than people assume at the sourcing end.
Corporate development / M&A origination at a company (not a bank) — scouting acquisition targets and building relationships before deals get technical.

Where this intersects with law specifically, since you don't have to throw the degree away: Big law does have a track that matches you better than associate work: client development / rainmaking, which is what makes someone partner-track in practice, not the technical drafting. The problem is you'd normally have to survive 6-8 years of technical grinding to get there. Some alternatives that skip that:

Legal recruiting (as above) — very common exit for lawyers who like people more than doctrine.
Law firm business development / marketing director roles — non-lawyer track, pure BD, working with partners on pitching new clients.
In-house roles at agencies or platforms that need someone who understands contracts but is doing partnerships, not drafting.

One honest caveat: you're 3-4 months into this, it's still novel, and every new "yes" is inherently more exciting than a job you haven't started yet. That doesn't mean the pattern isn't real — but it's worth testing it against something slightly less novel before betting a career on it. A useful gut check: does the thrill hold up on the 50th hotel pitch, or was some of this the newness of realizing you could do it at all?

Given your parents' position, a low-risk path is: start the job, but deliberately look for BD-adjacent exposure inside the firm (pitch teams, client development committees, cross-selling) in year one, and treat the Instagram side as real evidence-gathering rather than a hobby — track your close rate, what pitches work, what doesn't. That data makes "I want to move toward BD/partnerships" a much stronger case to make to both your parents and future employers than "I like Instagram."

How does someone figure out what to do with their life??

I’m 26(f) , I don’t know what to do with my life. I’m not passionate about anything. I can’t afford college but if I could, I wouldn’t know what to do because no major is interesting. Sometimes I wonder if my childhood was slightly different , would things be different. I’m not saying that I had a bad childhood, but I wasn’t exposed to things like youth sports or things of that nature. I’m trying different things now like hand crochet blankets but it cost money . I feel like I kind of went off topic but, any advice would help. I feel like I should have it all figured out by thirty but maybe I should stop putting myself on this timeline.

Jobadvisor

This is one of those questions that feels huge because it's phrased huge. "What to do with my life" is almost impossible to answer directly — but "what should I try next month" is answerable. Let me respond to what you actually wrote, not the cosmic version of it.

A few things stand out from your message:

The passion thing is a trap. Most people don't have a pre-existing passion sitting around waiting to be discovered. Interest usually comes after competence, not before. You get a little good at something, that feels good, so you do more of it, and eventually it looks like "passion" from the outside. Waiting to feel passionate before you commit to anything gets the order backwards. So "I'm not passionate about anything" isn't a red flag about you — it's just where most people start.

The childhood theory is worth noticing, not chasing. It's a very natural thought — if I'd been exposed to more as a kid, I'd know myself better now. Maybe true. But it's not something you can go back and fix, and dwelling there tends to produce guilt or grief instead of momentum. The more useful move is to treat right now as the exposure period you didn't get then. You're 26, not 46 — there's real time to just try things and see what sticks.

Which is what the crochet thing already is. You called it a tangent, but it's not — it's data. You picked something with your own money and time, with nobody making you. That's exactly the kind of signal that matters more than any personality quiz or "find your passion" framework. The question isn't "is this my life's purpose," it's "did I like doing it, and do I want to do more of it or something adjacent to it."

Drop the age-30 deadline. It's not a real cutoff, it's a number that got attached to some cultural anxiety. Careers now are long and nonlinear — plenty of people find real direction in their 30s and 40s. Holding yourself to "figured out by 30" just adds pressure that makes exploration feel like failure instead of what it actually is.

If it's helpful, I can ask you a couple quick questions to help narrow down some actual next steps — not "find your purpose" stuff, more like concrete, low-cost things to try next. Want that, or would you rather just talk through what's on your mind first?