I feel like I failed life

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Short rundown of my current angst: I am 25 and I recently fired for poor performance. This was a retail job, which is arguably less difficult than the job I was actually trained to do. I have been complacent in finding a job relevant to my degree because I have admittedly been terrified that I have wasn't good enough. The loss of my last job has made me doubt myself even further and ask if I am even employable at all.

I place much of my self worth of in my ability to work and be productive. I'm trying to stay productive by working on art for an upcoming anime convention (yes, I am setting the bar somewhat low, but it's a good bridge into gaining clients). I also try to look for different jobs and, of course, normal household chores. Still, it never feels like enough and I feel like I fall severely short of my own expectations.

A few of the reasons I was dismissed included that I was too slow, too disorganised and not learning or adapting fast enough. I have chronic difficulties with executive functioning and as hard as I tried, I wasn't good enough. In fact, the stress from the job was so bad I had gastrointestinal issues and had blood in my stool.

It makes me feel like a complete leech and a failure that I am jobless, living with my mum and begging for a handout from the DWP. I hate being a NEET, essentially and I'd like to not be one very soon, but given how much I need to improve, I'm worried I will never manage even the most menial of no and that makes me feel like I have no purpose. I just don't feel like I have earned the right to like myself and probably never will.

Sorry you're going through a rough time. Seems like work is really hard to find these days, for everyone.

At 44 I've made peace with the fact that I 'Failed Life', and I don't blame myself for my inability to succeed at any kind of job. But at 25 I was definitely still determined to keep trying, so I understand that feeling as well. For me, 29 was the point when it became clear that my best efforts at work were failing, over and over and over again. Then came a string of last-ditch attempts at home-based employment, before I finally accepted around 32 that it simply wasn't going to happen for me.

Anyway I respect you for not giving up at this point, and I hope that your career trajectory will have a happier ending than mine did! Good luck with the job search - I hope something better comes along soon.

Yeah, I "failed life" too. Here in the US you're considered less of a human being if you aren't productive and contributing to society economically. If you keep failing at doing so, everybody calls you "lazy" and spews psychobabble at you-try harder, stop playing video games (I never did since my dyspraxia is so bad), get up off the couch, just do it and don't complain. When you still fail, people simply abandon you or tell you to kill yourself. I've been kicked off several forums for a "negative, victim mentality". I'm 41 and I'm still trying though. There are so many workers out of work and so few jobs that employers are really sadistic in the hiring process, their chief aim seems to be "proving" that "lazy Americans won't work" by finding BS reasons not to hire them, then hiring slave labor from Mexico, China, and India. Americans won't work for $1/hr, but Mexicans will. I have tried self-employment but failed there too. Now I'm living with my elderly, sick mother, and when she dies I may be out on the street. I have no other family.

I would absolutely suck at retail jobs.

You should try for a job in the field in which you got your degree; you'll be treated with much more respect than you were in retail. People in retail are not frequently treated with respect.

Well, it s what I'm trying to do. I only got a job in retail because at that point the money was more important than the career and any job was better than no job, so I applied for various types of jobs.

The problem is that I don't think I would perform much better even in my own discipline. The creative industry is highly competitive and the working conditions are a lot harder. Yes, it would be a job I love, but I'm worried that I'll still mess it up anyway. Like I said, I have chronic issues regarding getting my s**t together and clearly I'm no good under pressure. There is still a part of me that doesn't mean want to give up, but I don't seem to be learning from my mistakes and it infuriates me that I don't see what I could do differently. I worry that I have reached a state of stagnation in my life and now more than ever I need to get outside of my comfort zone. I don't like the person I have become. I want to live up to my values and I can't do that if I am not learning from my mistakes.

I am 25 and I really relate to this but 25 is still young. I have been expelled from school and fired from all my jobs and I feel like a failure but the good news is I am getting better at handling things. I imagine you will too, it doesn't matter how many times you fail as long as your either learning more about how to be or building yourself up to be successful. My saying is this, success is a boat that floats on a sea of failures. In my experience you can never be successful at anything without first failing a bunch.

I invite you to look at it from a different perspective: that job was a bad fit for you. Think of shopping for clothes for a moment: you try on different outfits - some fit, some don't. For the ones that don't, there may be nothing wrong with the clothes themselves, and nothing wrong with you; it's just not a match. The ones that fit play to your strengths, they suit your body, the colour is right for you and so on. Jobs are the same: some don't fit.

As a young self-supporting student I had many different jobs, and some were a very bad fit for me. Over time I was able to better identify the "good fit" jobs which played to my strengths (in my case the strengths were memory, analysis, word processing, writing). You will have your set, whatever they are. I sucked at working in an extremely noisy office (literally could not hear myself think, could not hear my own thoughts). I excelled at working as a medical secretary for a specialist, a sole charge position where I didn't have to socialise with other staff (there weren't any). A lot of the communication was done in writing, reports back to referring doctors and making hospital bookings, receiving lab reports and so on, and though it required a lot of interaction this was mostly written rather than verbal one to one encounters with strangers, and that suited me.

You too will have a catalogue of strengths whatever they are. Always remember: "one swallow doesn't make a Summer" and I suspect that only a minority of us here would find a retail a good fit. I couldn't do it as the constant face to face interaction would exhaust me.

I so wish you a great fit job, where you can play to your strengths and find your niche. Different courses for different horses..

In other words: You're not a lost cause!