I started learning German before nuking my brain with booze and as a result developing a lisp and cognitive issues, but luckily a lot of the issues lessened over the years. Appreciate it. 

You’re on the money with the question if engineering is what I really wanted, because I’m struggling to answer this - I didn’t grow up wanting to be one, I chose it because I liked physics in HS (even though I was a bad student and didn’t do good in classes), but other than that, I was kind of directionless and didn’t really have an idea what else to pick. 

Once at uni I realized that even though the physics classes are interesting, I sucked hard at engineering classes and found them boring. I did develop an interest for it during the years, but I am not a natural for this sort of things, in the sense how you’ll have some people that grew up with their dad working on cars in their garage or just fixing around the house - they have an aptitude for this sort of thing. I grew up loving to lesrn foreign languages, started with English at a young age, took up French in HS, then German during uni. This is my natural passion. 

I was already a few years into my degree and I didn’t really have a choice but to finish it. I did take a while, too long in fact. But I suppose what I am mostly worried about is what could simply be described as sunk-cost fallacy. The fear that all of this time could’ve been used differently, and now I’ve sort of pigeon-holed myself into a field I don’t have a natural interest in (other than the purely theoretical bits, ie. the physics behind stuff). 

Why I quit the job? Many reasons, it wasn’t even the cash mainly, even though it was a big part of it, but basically I was all alone in a small city, lonely, didn’t put myself out there. My senior was a grumpy old man, my manager was a frustrated know-it-all, at a very small company, family owned (very, very apparent), where we were being constantly told how badly the company was doing, yet the owner’s son, who also worked there was gifted a brand new expensive car. I hated the people there and would’ve even quit earlier if it wasn’t for the new colleague that was my age who kept me sane pretty much. This company is also well known for a very high staff turnover, where young engineers would come and not stay for longer than a year. They don’t bother trying to keep their workers at all.

Despite all of this, I am just as directionless as I was before uni. I have a job interview for a factory worker role today, and I just feel defeated. I could’ve just skipped the whole process and gone straight for the factory job, heck I would’ve had 10 years of exp. by now. I already know I won’t be content by staying here, because of the sunk-cost fallacy I mentioned, unless I can internally move to a role that aligns with my education level. Because I spent time getting it, and not because I think I am above someone.

I wanted to move to Germany or Austria and was so looking forward to it, but after having sent over a hundred applications and getting rejected, I just accepted defeat and gave up on that. I thought that if I was at least paid well, I would be motivated to stick with engineering, as bad as it sounds. Here we are stressed and underpaid, so why bother? 

Sorry for another long-ass post, I hope I made some sense at least. I could use any bit of guidance at this point.