BergischerLöwe
Master Don Juan
Like the title says I'm 27 years old and I've never really had any semblance of a career, or even a reliable source of income from a job for that matter. I never had a job as a teenager or in college, and the most consistent money I ever made in my life came during the summer of '14 when I worked for my mom's boyfriend's construction company in the last two months before college started. Currently I get the money I need to live from a combination of the money my family made when we sold the newspaper and TV station we owned, as well as the trust fund my grandfather set up for me when I was really young. My family isn't crazy rich in the grand scheme of things, we're like one tier above upper middle class if that makes sense. I guess you could call it "lower upper class". The fact that I have at least some money is all well and good but I'd love to have an additional source of income to put me in the black and not burn thru the money I have already so much, and also to never really have had a job at this age is pretty unbecoming anyway. It's also of note that I'm not blowing all my trust/corporate sale money all at once. I live a fairly modest life in all actuality, despite coming from a relatively upper class background. I don't spend that much money on living expenses like groceries and I live by myself in a small apartment in a decent suburb of the city I've lived in for most of my life. I graduated college in late 2019 and since then I haven't really done very much with my life. My weekly routine revolves around going to the gym, attending religious lectures, and practicing or recording with my band.
The major I picked in college (German) was pretty useless in hindsight. One good thing tho is that I have no student debt since the trust payed for my college. After I graduated I dabbled in doing freelance translation work on the internet translating documents from German to English, but I only ever made like 20 dollars doing that. I've always had a knack for languages and I've known German for my entire life, and I have a pretty academic knowledge of the languages I know, so sometimes friends or family have suggested I go to grad school to study linguistics or something. However my undergrad GPA isn't good enough for me to get in and even if that wasn't so I still wouldn't do it since it would very likely be a waste of time. I have decent knowledge of a couple classical languages like Sanskrit and Latin but this is just a parlour trick and useless in the grand scheme of things.
Technically the closest thing I have to meaningful work experience is the recording and touring experience I have as a musician. Bass is my main instrument and I also play guitar and sitar. I've played in the same band for nine years. In this time we've released five studio albums with a sixth in the works and gone on tour twice, one of which was a national tour. However, the albums don't sell that well and the tours weren't exactly glamourous. It just consisted of three weeks of touring the midwest, mountain west, and west coast playing at small clubs for little money and sleeping in our van in walmart parking lots. My band has never been lucrative and there's only been a few times we've made decent money from playing shows. There's been a couple times where we've played shows and made a few hundred dollars from it but these instances have been rare. It's safe to say I'll never be making enough money thru music to pay the rent. Last year I applied for a job at a guitar store near my house, and they interviewed me and it seemed to have gone pretty well. However, when they called me back they informed me they had a "hiring freeze" and thus couldn't give me the job. In the past few months tho I've seen new faces working there so I'm pretty sure they just didn't want to hire me and let me down gently. I would have much preferred it if they would have just outright told me I didn't have the job.
A more distant relative of mine owns a small music venue in town and has said a few times that I should come work there. The job is there if I want it but it's not ideal and would only be a short term solution. I don't really want to work there since the hours would suck and it would mostly consist of mundane work like moving amplifiers and other equipment on and off the stage. I'd be coming home from work at like 3 AM every time with that job and that would suck too. There's a couple other guitar stores I could maybe apply to but I'm worried my lack of work experience will be my undoing, despite the fact that I'm an experienced musician with very good knowledge of instruments and music equipment. Furthermore I have ADHD so I really doubt I'd be able to hold a retail job for long before getting fired. I've always had a huge problem with being late to things and my condition also causes me to make stupid trivial mistakes on a regular basis. I don't have much confidence that I would be able to be a good employee. I'd probably get fired eventually for being late too many times or making a dumb mistake.
In short I really don't know what to do here. There's things in my life that I'm good at and passionate about, but nothing that translates into being a viable source of income. I'm a good musician but rock n roll will never pay the rent. I know a few languages but there's not much demand for translation from German to English and the classical languages I know are even more useless. I'm intelligent, articulate, and reasonably well educated but I have ADHD and because of it I would be a poor employee bound to eventually be fired from job I would get in the off chance that someone would even hire me in the first place. I can't go back to school since my GPA in undergrad wasn't high enough and it would be a waste of time anyway. The fact that I have a trust fund makes me less motivated to look for work since I'm not under any direct threat of not having enough money to pay for living expenses. Overall it doesn't seem like I have any good options as far as career, or even temporary employment. So what am I to actually do?
The major I picked in college (German) was pretty useless in hindsight. One good thing tho is that I have no student debt since the trust payed for my college. After I graduated I dabbled in doing freelance translation work on the internet translating documents from German to English, but I only ever made like 20 dollars doing that. I've always had a knack for languages and I've known German for my entire life, and I have a pretty academic knowledge of the languages I know, so sometimes friends or family have suggested I go to grad school to study linguistics or something. However my undergrad GPA isn't good enough for me to get in and even if that wasn't so I still wouldn't do it since it would very likely be a waste of time. I have decent knowledge of a couple classical languages like Sanskrit and Latin but this is just a parlour trick and useless in the grand scheme of things.
Technically the closest thing I have to meaningful work experience is the recording and touring experience I have as a musician. Bass is my main instrument and I also play guitar and sitar. I've played in the same band for nine years. In this time we've released five studio albums with a sixth in the works and gone on tour twice, one of which was a national tour. However, the albums don't sell that well and the tours weren't exactly glamourous. It just consisted of three weeks of touring the midwest, mountain west, and west coast playing at small clubs for little money and sleeping in our van in walmart parking lots. My band has never been lucrative and there's only been a few times we've made decent money from playing shows. There's been a couple times where we've played shows and made a few hundred dollars from it but these instances have been rare. It's safe to say I'll never be making enough money thru music to pay the rent. Last year I applied for a job at a guitar store near my house, and they interviewed me and it seemed to have gone pretty well. However, when they called me back they informed me they had a "hiring freeze" and thus couldn't give me the job. In the past few months tho I've seen new faces working there so I'm pretty sure they just didn't want to hire me and let me down gently. I would have much preferred it if they would have just outright told me I didn't have the job.
A more distant relative of mine owns a small music venue in town and has said a few times that I should come work there. The job is there if I want it but it's not ideal and would only be a short term solution. I don't really want to work there since the hours would suck and it would mostly consist of mundane work like moving amplifiers and other equipment on and off the stage. I'd be coming home from work at like 3 AM every time with that job and that would suck too. There's a couple other guitar stores I could maybe apply to but I'm worried my lack of work experience will be my undoing, despite the fact that I'm an experienced musician with very good knowledge of instruments and music equipment. Furthermore I have ADHD so I really doubt I'd be able to hold a retail job for long before getting fired. I've always had a huge problem with being late to things and my condition also causes me to make stupid trivial mistakes on a regular basis. I don't have much confidence that I would be able to be a good employee. I'd probably get fired eventually for being late too many times or making a dumb mistake.
In short I really don't know what to do here. There's things in my life that I'm good at and passionate about, but nothing that translates into being a viable source of income. I'm a good musician but rock n roll will never pay the rent. I know a few languages but there's not much demand for translation from German to English and the classical languages I know are even more useless. I'm intelligent, articulate, and reasonably well educated but I have ADHD and because of it I would be a poor employee bound to eventually be fired from job I would get in the off chance that someone would even hire me in the first place. I can't go back to school since my GPA in undergrad wasn't high enough and it would be a waste of time anyway. The fact that I have a trust fund makes me less motivated to look for work since I'm not under any direct threat of not having enough money to pay for living expenses. Overall it doesn't seem like I have any good options as far as career, or even temporary employment. So what am I to actually do?
