LIFE SUCKS

Spinning Wheels

I thought it could be cathartic to post here.

I am a 30 year old single female living in Maine, US. I graduated a few years ago with my masters in marine science. I moved up here for a job, and given it's in my field, but I don't feel any joy from it,and it pays extremely poorly (not what a master's should make, but in this economy, that's somewhat moot. I'm on call a month on, a month off for equipment failure, etc and can't go anywhere of note the entire month when on call.

The hard part is just feeling so stuck and having little to show for it. I've applied to hundreds of jobs since getting out of graduate school and am continually turned down again and again and try not to get discouraged and come up with new game plans each time. At the end of my master's program, I had an almost eight year relationship fall apart, slept on my brother's couch for months, trying to find work while accruing tons of debt trying to pay my bills. So I'm at least on the up and up from there. It took about 2 1/2 years to find steady work.

I've tried for graduate school to go back for my PhD, but funding has about dried up and most professors are saturated with students. Other interesting opportunities I may not have enough experience for, or enough resources (mostly money) to get certain certifications to ultimately get any further. I feel like I keep hitting a wall again and again and I can't creep any further forward.

Dating prospects are dismal up here, and the on-call thing makes that part harder. Being single does mean I have the freedom to leave if an opportunity arises, but just not sure if it will.

So given, there are people with truly desperate situations, and my life is not terrible, but I worry I will be stuck five, ten years from now with no relationship, an unsatisfying job with a dismal salary, the inability to travel or do anything I might be passionate about.

I do have some severe depression I do my best to work through and I do rally again and again, but sometimes I feel all the hard work and karma, and positive thoughts never pan out...