There were many years that I could’ve written almost every word and feeling you wrote. And there are plenty of others, too, who could have and could now.

If you’re not good at what you enjoy, get better. Put more of yourself into it. Hone it. Breathe it. Sleep it. Everyone gets better with dedicated practice (except me and math, lol). So maybe you get better in yoga but not extraordinary–good for you! you improved!–yet you get so good in painting that friends want some of your work hanging on their walls.

You clearly show desire to be part of something creative, and a theme in large part seems spiritual. You might never be happy or content with a typical job but bills need to be paid, so perhaps consider an online or otherwise certification or training in something that doesn’t demand too much to get.

Coming to terms with reality and your own creative nature is hard. A lot of people like you don’t try to find a career, as you put it. They work at jobs, complain about them from time to time, while they are busy fulfilling their soul all the other hours in a day.

Do you think you should have a career, or think having one will make the next forty years easier, or…….?

If you know having a career outside anything that involves your interests will not satisfy you, I don’t see it as wrong to accept that, and know life might or might not be a little rockier b/c of it. We are who we are. Only you can decide what’s most important for you: Jobs vs. a “typical” career path.

There are so very many opportunities for creative people out there now–that didn’t exist years ago! Explore. Research. Talk to people who are doing it well. Talk to people who failed, too, to learn from them. Who can succeed without failing first? Failing is a great teacher! And facing our fears gives us incredible freedom!

On my end of it, I used to feel terribly restless most of the time, regardless how satisfied I was; my mother would say it was “the nature of the beast.” I still get restless, so maybe she was right, but I realized I’m a “sampler.” Don’t know if that’s a real thing, but that’s what it feels like to me. It’s who I am. I’ve sampled A LOT of life that for certain I wouldn’t have if I’d forced myself to do what I thought I should years ago.

Some people can end up having “it all” but usually it seems most everything in life is a trade-off, big or small, in the beginning or at the end.