I am 20, nearly 21, and it may just be the anxiety talking, but I’m worried for my future and how I will afford just about anything when I can barely keep a job for extended periods of time. This post will mainly be context to my situation, so if you already have tips, please send them my way! If your tip is “you’re so young, things will work out,” please take that up with the employers I’ve been getting no responses from.
Basic context: I live in CO in the US. I have held 3 full-time jobs over the past 5 years, which doesn’t sound too bad at face value. The story untold is that the last month or so of every job I held, I’d been borderline hospital-admission level of not doing well. And before you call me just plain lazy, I’ll also include awards or special recognitions I received at each job.
I got my first job at 16 y/o at a grocery store being an in-store shopper. I held this job for 7 months and had to quit due to increased stress in school causing some not so fun nights. At this job, I was the 2nd most efficient shopper, and would be considered essential every weekend. I was hard-capped at 40 hours a week due to unions since I was a minor, yet would hit 38+ hours on school breaks.
After that, I didn’t get another full-time job until the pandemic, when I graduated high school. I then worked at a restaurant seasonally for about 7-8 months total as a server and during that job, I had extensive mental health problems outside of the job that extended into the workplace with 3 breakdowns during work. I would often at this job work as a host, server, dishwasher, and expo all at the same time and would sometimes have to work lunch rushes by myself due to staff shortages.
During the time that I was working seasonally at the restaurant, I was attending college to pursue a degree in meteorology. Being a meteorologist is my very hopeful, but unrealistic end goal since I had to withdraw after ending up in the hospital twice early on in my Sophomore year. These hospital stays were from, you guessed it, mental health lapses.
I took a few months of a break after the hospital stays and did not start my next full-time job until 4 months later at a ski resort. I then worked as a ski lift operator/off-season helper for about 8-9 months total until I quit that job about two months ago due to a severe manager-influenced mental breakdown that left me unable to climb stairs for nearly four days. This was the second time I had a mental breakdown at this job, and after repeated joking about and disregard of my mental health by my manager(s), I figured I would move on. At this job, I received $50 extra compensation for “exceptional work”, two employee of the month awards, and another special recognition for helping out beyond my department.
So that’s where I’m at now. I’ve had side gigs of being a tutor, dog sitter, babysitter, house sitter, personal driver, and a few other one-off things to help keep me afloat. I still live with my parents which some would call a blessing, but constant pressure to get an actual job from my Dad who doesn’t like to acknowledge my experience with mental health makes it hard. I have about 4-5 months worth of money saved up to pay for rent/groceries/gas/anything else, and that’s about it. I’ve applied to multiple (4) meteorology internships and have heard nothing back, applied to five jobs in the area of data analysis/science and have heard nothing back, as well as two local jobs that said they were urgently hiring who also didn’t respond, so here I am. Almost two months removed from my previous job after a meltdown that left me catatonic for a day and a half, I’m trying to search for a job to continue with life as best as I can. And it’s not like I don’t have experience relevant for the jobs I’ve applied to, I have plenty of personal projects I have completed in that area and have shown excellence in each of them.
Any tips for anything would be appreciated since I’m sorta lost on where to go now. I’m discouraged about how I’ll pay for my future before I even get to the age to drink legally, and I would like to do something about it so I’m not just looked at as wasted potential.