Lately I have been very uncertain of myself and my future, especially relating to work. I have a lot of conflicting thoughts when it comes to the issue and i'm at a point where i feel like my life is starting to idle due to it. Before going into my reasons for why I have been struggling to get back into working, my main conflict with those reasons is that I want to be able to do things for the people I love. I want to be able to buy/rent a place for my partner and I to live, I want to be able to afford nice trips with them and my family to places they have always wanted to go, I want to buy them nice dinners and wonderful gifts, and overall I want to have the financial security to be able to help/support the people around me should they require my help. Despite these things, I continue to find it incredibly difficult to motivate myself to rejoin the workforce. For some background on myself, I have worked in mainly the industries you expect of someone college-aged like myself, those being retail, fast food, serving jobs, and delivery; however, I don't find these lines of work rewarding and even if I did they would not allow me to the things I want from above. So, I have been trying to find more stable, meaningful work but there are multiple things that have been holding me back.
Firstly, so many of the jobs I feel would be rewarding require a level of education I have yet to be able to achieve. For example, I would love to be a teacher at a middle/high school level but I do not have the qualifications for that sort of position (and currently I do not have the means to get said qualifications). Besides that, I have spent most of my upbringing hearing my teachers lament over the poor pay and working conditions in the industry which has only made it harder to convince myself to enter the field since I have little faith it would support me in my goals I listed before.
Secondly, I find myself consistently appaled by the current work culture set by employers. Existing employees are expected to pick up the work of former employees leaving the company, for no increase in pay, all while being the target of harassment by managers and/or customers for not meeting the unrealistic expectations that the aforementioned redistribution of former-employee work entails.
Third, I place extremely high value on my time seeing as it is one of the few things I will likely never be able to get back, or be able dd to what I have remaining. With the job options I feel are truly available to me currently, I find myself almost incapable of accepting the $12-15 / hour that most places offer.
Finally, I spend at least some time (often more) every day pondering over the future of the world, with all the talk of nuclear escalation, climate change, and the possibility of a new world war occurring at any time it seems. These things make me worry about whether it's truly worth it to spend my time doing something I don't want to do in order to make money to perhaps afford to do things I would be unable to do had I not gotten a job.
I'm sure this post falls somewhere between a rant and a cry for help, but advice would be appreciated regardless.