I'm 31 and don't know what to do for a career... [View all]

I've just posted that I'm feeling a bit better emotionally which is true but when I feel better I start to mull over my life situation, which I need to do I believe. Right now I'm 1/2 way through an IT diploma at a university and if I have to be 100% honest with myself I have no fucking clue if I should be doing this. I went into this in some ways at the insistence of my parents who were worried that I had to get my life going and have some type of career that paid well enough. Retail jobs and failure after failure at university (due to emotional issues) wasn't going to cut it and my parents can't look after me anymore, nor should they. I didn't object too much at the time because, well, I've never known really what to do with myself and at the time I was too depressed to think straight. In the past I've always said my passion is science. Physics and Math particularly. Science still is but again if I'm going to be honest with myself that's a young man/woman's field. It's pretty difficult to make a go of a career in Math or Physics, or most of the sciences starting out at 30+. I suppose I have the intelligence to do just about anything, I'm not trying to brag just being honest, but I don't have the time anymore for those types of careers. I've always enjoyed computers so I thought, yeah sure a degree in IT whatever why not. But you can't approach you life that way now can you? Your career is something that defines you, you are going to be doing this the rest of your fricken life you better enjoy it. You have to seize it for yourself. It has to be something that YOU want to do, not something that's just "oh sure ok I guess". I'm in between semesters right now and one very bad sign I see is that despite feeling better I have no motivation to start going back to work on learning programming and other IT work.

Instead I find myself starting other pet projects, my family photo project, weight loss, getting out, passing my drivers license. These are all fine and good as far as improving my mood, but when push comes to shove I'm going to have to go back to the IT work sooner or later. Your career should consist of something that is self motivating. I should be eager to get back to making my own programs, releasing test games and the like in the android store, learning C++, etc... The fact that I feel like waiting until I'm forced back to these things by school's time tables, does not bode well I think. But then if not this, then what? It's getting too late in the day for me to just continue dicking around till I find my calling in life. Sure if it were up to me I'd do photography, or travel writing, or become a movie critique, but let's face it while there are some opportunities to be hand in these fields they are, if anything, more dog eat dog than the cubicle world. You have to be fucking good and stand out, you have to REALLY want it, and for me these are more childish aspirations, it's the part of me that wants to live on the fringes of society because all the "normal" jobs scare the hell out of me in one way or another. So I find myself stuck yet again. What to do? What to do? I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and continue in the IT diploma. I just hope that I hold up emotionally.