I am envying my friend more and more

[andyx181x]

Hi there, it be nice to know if there are some other folks here who feel the same way I do.

 

I have the only friends that matter that I can count on hand, for this in one particular we knew each other in high school and got to know each other around our junior year. Post high school he invited me more into his life and friends and gotten a bit more close, I trust him and grateful for the time we hang out.

 

Sadly given the past year I have been selfishly judging our progress in life, he graduated from college in psychology and ended up working with for his step dad in a banner/inflatable advertisement company, making pretty good money and is able to move out and live on his own. Myself i got a degree in engineering and currently unemployed due to politics, I have yet to gain the satisfaction in being what I want in life.

 

Other then struggling to manage my sanity at home, I can't help envying him more and more cause his life is farther ahead then me. The opportunities for him to move out alone hits me hard as i'm going to be 28 and now feel like time is an issue, his opportunities to travel and hang with a different set of friends leaves me on the side lines a bit as well.

 

Lastly on the case of women it seems he's the luckier of the two gaining more attention and sometimes getting to be spontaneous on the spot. While he's single and i'm glad he gets attention (for which he has no desire for a relationship) I often feel upstaged between the two of us. He doesn't do anything wrong but sometimes it makes me feel being around him is almost a guarantee after all the talking and flirting the choice was already made that he won. I guess part of me always envy the idea of never getting this kind of attention or wanting in person, I often had to depend on online dating and that it myself makes me feel lower for it. Granted i'm not the insecure person I once was in high school, just boggles the mind the difference between us can affect on the female mind.

[Kendahke]

I think that you are still to some extent the insecure person you once were.. if not that, you sound pretty unmotivated.

 

You've got a degree in engineering, but instead of looking at the set of skills you've got and seeing how they laterally transfer to a different job, you've thrown up your hands and have blamed your not being able to find work on politics. Sure, you can sit around and wait on the perfect job to open up at the perfect company, but in the meantime, you've lost out on gaining a whole different set of skills/building on the skill set you've got by doing something else you had not considered.

 

Have you worked with a head hunter to find employment? How about your school's placement department? How many internships did you do while in school? How much networking do you do? Do you attend social functions for your industry so that you can build a network of people who can help you out if their company is looking to hire? 90% of the time, it's who you know, not what you know, that gets your body in the door, let alone your foot.

 

Your buddy was able to transfer his skill set and work for his family. That was probably waiting for him no matter what field he chose. And good for him that he had that. I went to school with a lot of ladies whose families had their job lined up for them. I wasn't one of those, nor were a lot of people I've known through the years. I wasn't settled in my line of work until I was 31 years old, which was rather late to be getting started.

 

My daughter is a good example of applying one's self. She got her BA degree, but every summer, she worked an internship and she amassed a huge network of contacts. She went to DC and worked on the hill for her first one. She attended every networking opportunity she could during that summer. When the summer and internship was over, she went to work for a policy house. From there, she got in at an office for a congresscritter as a PA. She worked there for 2 years then got in on the Senate side in a really good office as a Legislative Correspondent. She worked there for 2 more years then left to go get her MPA. When she graduated with her masters, from all of the networking she'd done, she was one of only a handful of her classmates who had a job in her field by the time she had the stole put over her head. One of the students addressing the audience at the graduation actually stood up there and spit on the school and faculty because she hadn't found a job that she expected to have fallen into her lap now that she'd spent money on a master's. The audience was aghast at her temerity.

 

Focus your energy on building your life, not begrudging your boy for his path. His time of struggle might not take place until his late 40's and you more than likely will be sailing high because of the work you put in now to achieve what it is you want for the long term.

 

The chicks will come. Dont' be hung up on not getting one right now. Get your life in order.

[SooSad33]

Hi,

 

The worst thing you can do is compare yourself to someone else like this. IF you and him never met, think you'd be thinking like this?

We ALL had many classmates growing up. But never did i compare my life to theirs. We all go at different speeds in life, doing different things etc.

He is NOT you. Just because he's doing this or has that, does not make YOU any less of a person, just a different one.

 

Dont belittle yourself, okay? You WILL get far too. You'll just do much of this on your own. Also remember it's up to you to change things too. ie: careers..move etc.

[laninaperdida]

I actually don't think comparing yourself to other people is a bad idea.

How else are you supposed to know where you stand?

I don't think you should obsess over it, but you're not always going to be the best.

I'm sure if you spent as much time (unintentionally) musing over what the friend you mentioned in your post is up to as you did for a few of the losers you know, you'd feel better, lol.

Everything is relative.

This particular person is living life better than you, so what?

Use him as motivation because tons of people are worse off.

[happpybear]

I think you need to turn this around and look at it differently, go ahead and compare myself to others, but only as a means to inspire yourself to work harder. Don't look at their accomplishments and get jealous, get motivated instead, turn it into a positive!

[andyx181x]

I appreciate your feedback but I'm guessing this goes a bit off tangent and I made a mistake in my wording in the first post, granted i didn't provide a lot of detail about my working background cause that wasn't the case of this post. I don't really know what good is my major to translate to a separate world of occupation, I set out to be an engineer and want to one day be a competent engineer but not back track. Experience is the hard lesson i learned that all of my dream jobs in different engineer titles but in different industries are what holds me back from just having a job. I don't believe there are dream jobs all I want is just one so I can start making a career for myself.

 

Now I been working since i got out of high school, full time worker at 36+ hours a week plus taking 12+ units in community college and university, I had to work to pay my bills and expenses and I didn't qualify for financial aid or most scholarships and had to take out a loan to pay for my school. Even then i never dipped into that money hence why I worked, I didn't bother with internships cause well maybe you believe your daughters politic liberal art background is the same as science/engineering field. All companies do for internships for engineers is shuffle papers and organize, cause well my view is the last 30 years companies do less and less to help future workers grow and establish themselves in their organizations and expect college graduates to come out some how having 10+ years experience.

 

I worked majority of the time as quality inspector for various machine shops, jobs that gave me the raw detail of quality but the not ever the opportunity to be promoted higher then that unless I applied to engineer positions directly. I got fired from an Austrian owned aerospace company that feed me b/s that they were a right company that would help and be understanding which I learned the hard way, i took another job as inspector again and got lucky finding another entry level engineer job and i got terminated after two months with a half ass excuse. I made as many contacts to help me out with another job but in the end of the day i don't have the experience and no one is hiring.

 

I guess the proper way to say it is, I envy for everything I studied and worked in my industry I get the harder slap to the face that I don't think I can make it; that maybe i was better off working from the ground up some other place then wasting my time in college and my friend he got something that didn't require a diploma but in the end is trail blazing him.

 

I do like what you say that it took you till 31 to be established in a job, its hard not to think about how life isn't what i expected now and not later if it when it will get better. Idk anymore..

[Kendahke]

I didn't bother with internships cause well maybe you believe your daughters politic liberal art background is the same as science/engineering field.

 

don't be a nasty brat. Of course I know the difference. What I was talking about was her applying herself. All I've read in your post was excuses and whining. She had to work, take out loans and do work study to pay for school, too. She didn't have a trust fund to pay for it. But because she networked like crazy, she was able to find programs which helped knock a huge amount of tuition off the bill.

 

And even if you were shuffling papers and organizing, companies aren't going to take someone jsut out of college with a BS and give them a directorship position over personnel and if that's what you think you were going to jump into just because you had a BS, then that's called having an overbearing sense of entitlement. Where I work, the interns who end up landing jobs here are those who cheerfully shuffled the papers and organized. It's what I did when I was learning my trade. I did what was needed and made sure that the papers were shuffled properly and filed and that things were organized well and efficiently because that left a good taste in the mouths of the people for whom I was working... and because I did do that, I was hired on at that company.

[andyx181x]

All i ever wanted was a position to prove myself worthy, I don't know enough to be a director or supervisor to anyone. I get your doing the tough view point but i think we took way off tangent from the original beginnings of this post.

[KarenC]

The best thing that you could ever do for yourself is to stop worrying about someone.

 

You're so worried about your friend that you aren't even focused on your own goals and maybe if you stop secretly hating him you can live and find peace within your own life.

 

He's climbing while you're enviously watching him seek and obtain his prize.

 

There's nothing wrong with feeling the way that you're feeling because in life if/when we fail, we sometimes tend to feel the way that you're feeling right now, however; at this point you're only harming yourself so you should take a new direction.

 

Maybe you should take a break from this guy and concentrate more on you...Just saying!