I’m really, truly not trying to be flippant. But welcome to the first taste of adulthood. What you plan for your life and what your life becomes are very different things. I am not who I expected to be. I am not in the career I expected. I don’t have the same interests I expected, and I only have like 2 friendships from my high school days that I’ve really maintained.
But the thing is, none of that is necessarily bad. I enjoy my job, but as a high schooler “municipal development” wasn’t a career to dream about, even though it can be very satisfying.
I have different friends and interests, but they’re not worse. It’s just that the world broadens as you age.
You can’t really know who you are until the training wheels come off. That’s where you’re headed by the sound of it. Is it scary and stressful? Absolutely. But when you come out of it you’ll be the person you are, not the person somebody expects you to be.
The 20s were an amazing time where everything in my life got flipped around more than once. Now that I’m a few decades past it, I can better appreciate how much I grew in that time.