Maybe I kinda suck at adulting

I'm not sure about everybody else or where do I stand in relative to everyone else, but I feel like I struggled hard trying to survive and find my place as an adult. Financially, even as my past job equipped me with some basic financial literacy and savings as a big part of my upbringing, I wouldn't say I'm far off from fine. Yet the irony is that I still feel incredibly insecure when it comes to managing money, investing, business and making them. It seems to take extra long for me to develop the most basic gut feeling just to manage my monthly budget, and even that still has plenty of holes to poke. Learning financial literacy from start-ups and entrepreneurs doesn't help too, I think every one of us are being bombarded with investment, business and passive income. Instead of feeling like oh, I am more equipped to do that with my exposure. But not really, I feel that if anything, it gives me so much anxiety. I'm constantly judging myself for not having the capacity to hustle, the capital to do the things I want to do, unable to have any skills that I can sell in a business rather than being full time employed and just having some foresight to see things as "opportunities". I have the pressure as almost all young adults, to gain some financial freedom to make my own calls, to afford my own place so that I can go and grow in the direction that I want to. I'm risk-averse and I don't like doing businesses with sudden exponential growth, because something doesn't feel right there. I couldn't see myself fit into traditional corporate or industrial large companies where profit comes first, but at the same time working with social enterprise and NGO doesn't fulfil my financial needs to get that freedom. I don't feel like there's a place for me other than making my own, but at the same time I need to have money to make my own place. I don't know how to get there. 

I can perform well in work that are more challenging, demanding, especially those that challenges status quo, doing things differently and tackling social or environmental issues. But these work are hard to come by and it doesn't pay that well and it's hard work. I feel like my only objection to working hard on these jobs is only because I'm afraid I'll look back in life and be mad at myself for not doing my dog training. I applied for a job that I know I'm definitely not qualified for in a really interesting project on urban farming. I look at my resume and I feel disappointed in myself. I know I do learn things here and there through out my years but I have nothing to show on my resume. The things that I learnt aren't enough for me to actually claim that I know how to do those jobs too. I feel stuck in my job and I don't know how to get to where I want to be. I'm not too sure where I want to be too, other than eventually being a full time dog trainer. I look at my resume and look at the resume of the people who are working in organisations that I would love to be in, and I thought to myself, no wonder I'm not being hired. I simply isn't the level as how I would like to be. Maybe I should go try other positions.

My personality of wanting to do things fast and different doesn't help with my working experience too. I was called defensive, resistant, aggressive, negative. I would own up to it and say that I was negative at times, especially when people dismissed my concerns or ideas to cater to the seniors and it's neither fair nor make sense. I don't like it when things aren't fair or efficient or it's to cater to the seniority. Of course, going through some things at work, I am learning my own blind spots and trying to be a better self. But more often than not, I don't have the wisdom at the moment to perhaps not tell the seniors that they don't know what young people want nowadays. I am not flexible when I see that things should be addressing bigger issues and probably hold my tongue and see how things turn out. 

As I think about it, I think it's because growing up I always have the trump card of being the elite student (academic achievements and positions) to speak my mind, to lead projects and even to tell teachers that they are wrong, nor am I afraid to do any of that. I firmly believe (still do) that we must always thrive to make changes, when we are in power we make it a point to help the voiceless, to be fair, to change the dysfunctional. Back in schooling days, obviously peers listens to me because I sorta do better in school and if challenge I'm not shy to fight back. Teachers too gave me fair considerations of what I said because I'm one of the "smarter" students they see and those who are defensive, oh well, I get bitter and I talk "back" (behind their back) lol. But all these school time achievement bare little weight in work life. But somehow I don't quite know how to "earn my stripes" in work. I still behave the same way and it frustrates me when people don't listen to me but if someone of higher rank or something later realize what I said was true and reiterate basically the same thing, it's taken in. 

So yeah, maybe I suck at adulting. I don't know what earns me the mic to be trusted with my judgment. I still believe that everyone should be given a fair chance to have their ideas taken seriously, somehow that's not very common where I see them. So I still feel like a kid even though I am 26 with some experience at work, but I don't know how it works.