How old is too old to not have a career yet?

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anyone else here in their late 20's and older and not financially stable yet? no career yet? you can have a job, be employed, although it's not really considered a career job, a profession

well that's pretty obvious

More obviousness...

Without pressure, a diamond is just another lump of coal.

A metaphor, not just for success, but for life itself!

anybody else who can relate to me?

My view is that there is no fixed age, because some people are early bloomers, some are late bloomers, and some are very late bloomers.
There are many famous people who are now "household names" who at your age had got nowhere and had failed over and over again. Walt Disney, for example! Yet this super-failure who everyone laughed at and said would never succeed left a legacy that lasted whereas the people who poured scorn on his ideas are completely forgotten.

Tony Attwood ("The Complete Guide to Aspergers") if my memory serves me correctly, notes that people with Aspergers are often late bloomers. Not all. It seems that there are some ASD people who know their focal talent early - engineering is a typical one - go into training for it straight from school and are very single-minded in gaining the qualifications to work in the career they want, and are often relatively early bloomers. The creative ASD types seem to take considerably longer to get going, and continually second guess themselves as to whether they want to do this thing or that. They may try many things before deciding, and this takes them longer of course, but all experience is relevant one way or another. Many creatives - writers, singers, painters - started much later than the age you are now and blossomed in their late-start careers. I have also known people to completely change careers to something different in middle age, choosing something they have no related experience in and yet thriving in it. So get over the age-barrier idea, it's a limitation that will only hold you back if you buy into it.

We live in a youth-oriented culture. It imposes certain "ageist" myths on the young, too - not just prejudice against the old. Anyone who tells you "by your age you should be successful/married/whatever" is imposing an ageist prejudice on you. If you like, turn their shoulds into your own coulds; however you are the only one living your life, and you have your own destiny to fulfil, not their ideas and shoulds.

For now the main thing is to identify the things you love to do and that you are good at. Identify your primary strengths and weaknesses. Going to see a professional career counsellor can be really helpful in identifying possible pathways to link your talents and interests with training and career paths.

It's not too late until you are so old that you can't participate in life anymore. As Kraftie said, Grandma Moses was in her 80s when she let rip with her art. People probably laughed at her at first. Don't take too much notice of what others think.

This website may be useful:

http://www.careerchangepathways.com/getting-unstuck/

Here's a thought for you today:

"if you always follow the herd, you end up walking in s..t"

Honour your own unique gifts and their timelines. Yes, you have them, hidden away at present like diamonds in the rough. You have to mine them, refine them, and let them shine. Your life task is to become the fullest version of you. I wish you all the very best with the exciting journey ahead.

I'm 25 and have been to community college a couple times too. I've had a few retail jobs and only one of them lasted more than a few months, and not coincidentally that was the most recent one. I got my diagnosis while I worked there specifically to get them to put me in the back of the store, since losing my job wasn't really an option at the time.
25 seems to be the magic age where everyone in my life has decided it's time to get on my case about my future. I *think* I've finally figured out my career path, but as I'm female that's mostly not what anyone wants to know about. My family wants to know when I'm getting married, when I'm gonna have kids, and pretty much assume I am going to stay home and watch them.
My social circle consists of my siblings and my boyfriend. I think that bothers my therapist more than me. I can't really maintain more than a couple relationships at a time, unless there's a helping framework, like school or work. I find it exhausting. I used to feel bad about it. I saw people my age on TV just hanging out in bars and parties and other social things, and it looked fun. I wanted it, but the experience for me was not fun unless I drank enough to dull all the sensory input. I'm happier at home with Netflix or out hiking. Not worrying about that anymore did help me free up some time to worry about figuring out a career.
I had a really hard time with dating until the last few years. I finally decided (after obsessing over it for quite some time) that it would probably be less painful to just go ask people out and get rejected than worry about the rejection for months as months as I had been doing. That's true for me. Crappy relationships and breakups and messy aftermath are still preferable to the what ifs.
In your post you said you don't really know what you want for your career, but you've always wanted a social life. Make that your first goal. Do what you've got to do to make it happen. If it's taking classes so you can meet more people or going to therapy or finding ways to work on social skills. Figure out the problem that is holding you back and solve it or ameliorate it as much as possible.
I know a few people that can relate. My dad fell into his 20+ year career as a mechanic after the business that was putting him through engineering school went under. My brother (31, diagnosed with ADD finally 2 years ago after several therapists and hypotheses) ended up in the Army when he kept losing jobs. My sister (29) is very outgoing, never has trouble getting a date, and seems to have settled into data entry for now even though she hates it. My mom has worked retail her entire life. I have an uncle who just finished pre-law and started law school at the age of 46 after driving a forklift in a warehouse for 15 years.
Sorry I wrote such a novel. This has kinda been the theme of my life the last few years.

I happen to LIKE Ramen Noodles

Oh man... I'm 32, don't have a job, perhaps won't have one for the foreseable future, at least none that provides me with a stable income and I"m living on welfare for as long as it might last. Financially secure... what's that? I'm happy to reach the end of the month, and sometimes... sometimes put my mind to saving up for things I want just to keep me from slipping in depression.

In my life I had 1... 1 job that lasted 18 months, and in the process of doing it, I was seeing a therapist and cutting hours, because I couldn't deal with it. To this day, it remains a mystery why no one ever got hurt there. I had a few jobs on the side, and perhaps that's fine with me... I don't mind a job for a few weeks, since it provides me with new information, yet the core of the problem is that I take too long to adjust, and if you're hiring a temp who can't perform properly on day 1 (or at least by the time the 2nd half of the shift comes around), it's a waste. And I often take 2 to 3 weeks to adjust to the practical stuff at a job. If I adjust at all... I can't even deal with 24-hour cycles to wake and sleep... let alone deal with the grind of shifts at work.

Not having any education that's relevant, as well as a lenghty resume of dropping out of school doesn't help either. I find solace in the fact that I'm not interested in what most people consider a "career". Though perhaps, even my choice of potential eductional routes wasn't set for a career either. Afterall; I once was in journalism school, if only for the fact that it would enable me to make life n-times more difficult for other people. That's about as much sustainability and financial security as I'm in now. All the other courses I took were merely a choice because "you gotta do something" and didn't like because they lacked a certain creative element I guess.

Perhaps the entire notion of career and being "set" differs per country though. From what I've understood in the US the entire educational system works differently and thus the route towards employment might very well differ as well compared to the one in the Netherlands.

I guess there's also a bit of solace in the fact that none of my friends, nor ex-girlfriends had sustainable careers for most of their life. Well, ex-girlfriends, is trickier, since most of them werent'even 25 when I dated them. The one that was, didn't graduate from university until age 30 and it took her quite a while to get a job, that still didn't do anything for the degree she got (Art history). And my friends; one is recently married, but set for disability income until retirement, whilst the other, who graduated as a game developer still lives with his dad, while he doesn't have a "regular" job either. In fact, I don't even know people with an actual career, lol. That's an interesting perspective I suppose

great so I am pretty much screwed. At 39, my Resume is a mess of temp jobs, periods of unemployment no real accoplishments.... So I am basically screwed and it is confirmed by this thread