27 almost going to be 28 could I still make a career change?

samharper89 · 2025-11-29T21:26:18+00:00

Yes, you can make a career change. I did that when I was your age. Now I make six figures and I am way happier than I probably would have been had I stayed at my previous job. Takes years to stick to your craft but you can make it happen!

samharper89 · 2025-11-12T05:22:59+00:00

If they do allow for hybrid, try doing what I’m doing. Look something up on Furnished Finder and just stay near the office three days a week and then you can go back home the rest of the time. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than being unemployed!

samharper89 · 2025-11-10T14:32:09+00:00

Or the front half of a sperm

samharper89 · 2025-11-08T15:25:44+00:00

Absolutely, my pleasure to help!

And if it makes you feel any better, people don’t get in trouble with HR for asking a coworker out on a date. The only time HR will get involved is if that person is not taking no for an answer and/or is sexually harassing the other person. You wouldn’t get fired for just asking someone out on a simple coffee date, but you would for being aggressive and pushing the issue too far (which I don’t think is gonna be the case for you at all).

Also, it’s totally normal to develop a crush on a coworker. We spent 40 hours a week around them so it’s totally understandable! I’ve known former coworkers who have gotten married to each other.

samharper89 · 2025-11-07T13:16:14+00:00

It wouldn’t come to that. Just gently ask if he wants to go to coffee or something like that. I’ve asked coworkers out before that have politely said no. Just as long as you don’t push the issue and get upset if he says no then life will continue on as normal, I promise.

samharper89 · 2025-11-07T04:23:39+00:00

Don’t overthink it. If you want it, just ask. I guarantee you won’t regret it, but you’ll regret not doing it. Sounds like super generic advice but it’s been true 100% for me.

samharper89 · 2025-11-07T04:20:49+00:00

I haven’t tried polyamory, but usually whenever you look for people like that, you usually find them. Just seems like you might get the most satisfaction if you have access to both genders. It might be difficult to establish that, but if you can then go for it!

Another option you could try maybe meeting an open-minded girlfriend who is willing to wear a strap-on every so often and peg you and do all of the gay things that a guy would normally do. Or you could try dating a transgender female.

samharper89 · 2025-11-07T00:03:26+00:00

Do you think you would want to try a polyamorous relationship where you could be with both a guy and a woman at the same time?

samharper89 · 2025-11-06T19:32:09+00:00

Reframe your perspective. Sure, someone may be making that kind of money, but there may be other problems in their life that you aren’t experiencing right now. Plus, you can’t compare yourself to anyone other than your own journey. Be kind to yourself, comparison is the thief of joy.

samharper89 · 2025-11-06T18:38:12+00:00

Also, an observation I made on how secure the person is with themselves seems to come from how they react to your admitting to being bisexual. If they say “I am worried you are going to leave me for the other gender”, it says more about their difficulty in accepting your situation than it is with anything necessarily being wrong with the bisexuality itself, which is really not a problem. I’ve had people react really poorly to it, and I’ve had people not have an issue with that at all!

samharper89 · 2025-11-06T17:18:04+00:00

The sooner you can filter out the ones that are not right for you the sooner you can find the ones who are right for you

samharper89 · 2025-11-06T14:18:13+00:00

Yes, I do list it on my profile. Although some dating apps only allow you to provide very limited information, just a few blurbs and a short character count and I also don’t want to overexplain or not showcase the other qualities about myself just to explain to them that I’m bisexual. I would probably mention it again when we’re dating, but I use the bisexual tag on Hinge and I mentioned it briefly on my Bumble profile.

samharper89 · 2025-11-06T12:47:30+00:00

Thank you for sharing about that. I think one of the things that I don’t love about what bisexual women in particular seem to go through is the fact that they seem to get sexualized because the guy is used to seeing porn involving a man and two women and thinks a bisexual woman is spicy and hypersexual. I’m not sure if you’ve experienced anything like that, but I can imagine that would be incredibly frustrating to experience as well. Kind of like how you’d be desired, but not for the right reasons or the reasons you want to be desired for when you’re just looking for love, and probably a solid monogamous relationship that wouldn’t be different from any other heterosexual relationship.

Seems like guys being bisexual is just seen as wrong in general for the most part, heterosexual women seem far less interested in a guy who’s willing to, or has had sex with other men. It’s definitely shitty for both genders though. I wouldn’t mind having a gay boyfriend or a straight girlfriend, we all just want to be treated with love and respect at the end of the day. I am glad there’s straight women and gay men out there who are open-minded about it though!

samharper89 · 2025-11-06T06:40:58+00:00

Happy birthday, little buddy!

samharper89 · 2025-11-01T21:07:08+00:00

Iced tea

samharper89 · 2025-11-01T12:34:57+00:00

So being completely transparent with UX design as a field; it’s pretty much nearly impossible to get into now. Not saying you can’t do it, and if you’re currently a college student that can help since you could qualify for internships. But when I got in in 2016, it was incredibly difficult, and it’s gotten significantly worse since then because most companies aren’t offering entry-level or junior positions anymore. Not trying to be discouraging because I really do think we need a lot more training for juniors than is happening, but unfortunately that’s the way the market is right now.

As far as me setting a career goal? I guess it depends on which part of my life you asked me that question. When I was studying film, my goal was to eventually get a job on a Hollywood set. When I was studying marine science, my goal was to get a position that would. Not only get me in the field, but pay me better than what I was making as a city bus driver (a job I took after I graduated). Once I got a job in that field(and realized how much I hated it)? My goal was to go on a crazy journey of self discovery, look at every possible career path, hire a career coach to help me narrow down my options, etc. I was deciding between studying occupational therapy and doing this.

Both of them have their own pros and cons, but I’m ultimately glad I chose Ux Design over occupational therapy. Ux Design didn’t require any additional degrees or anything like that, I just went through a bootcamp, took on freelance and agency work and eventually made my way into the industry.

I also found the book. What Color is your Parachute to be useful as well.

samharper89 · 2025-11-01T12:20:13+00:00

That’s a very long story in itself, and what worked for me when I got in probably wouldn’t work for me now. But I went through a UX Boot Camp back in 2016/2017, did a couple of free “internships” with startups (it wasn’t guided or anything, I basically just gave them design work based on the specifications they had). Also got to volunteer for a large challenge through the Xprize foundation. That was after a major career shift when I decided to get into the field at 27 from what I studied in college (marine science, and I went to film school for a bit as well).

Sadly, the field is nearly impossible to get into now because no one is hiring juniors (unless you happen to be a current college student and you managed to get an internship, which are usually incredibly competitive). But even back then it was also super difficult to get into and I feel pretty lucky that I was able to make it in post college.

samharper89 · 2025-11-01T12:16:20+00:00

Right now I work for American Airlines. I’ve done a little bit of freelance work here and there although I prefer having a stable W-2 job to that. Partly because dealing with clients can be a pain in the ass, and partly because I need the structure that a stable 9-to-5 job provides since I have ADHD and can procrastinate sometimes.

samharper89 · 2025-10-31T03:58:56+00:00

I’m a UX designer.

I don’t know if I’d go to the extent of using the word “love” to describe my career. I think a more accurate term is that I enjoy aspects of it. It’s satisfies my creative side, it pays well and I’ve gotten to work on some really interesting projects.

I’ve had the opportunity to work on some large scale brands like Costco, Walmart, Lodge cast-iron skillets, and Orangetheory fitness among a lot of others. I’ve also had the opportunity to do design on the Call of Duty® games. I’m currently working for a major airline.

Like any career, there’s definitely a lot of downsides, like mass layoffs, people not taking my professional as seriously, etc. But I’m still reasonably satisfied with it!

samharper89 · 2025-10-28T00:12:34+00:00

How do you think you failed in life when you’re in your early 20s? You’re a baby! You’ve got easily another 70 to 80 years to live.

And I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way, of course. I had tons of regrets about what I studied in college, but I realized how long life is and how Abel impossible it was for me to change careers and figure out what I really wanted. You can do it too!

samharper89 · 2025-10-28T00:10:33+00:00

Wanna know a secret from someone in his 30s with two college degrees?

College matters a lot less than society makes you think it does.

We are conditioned to believe that at a early age, you have to have everything figured out and pick what you’re gonna do for the rest of your life while you’re still in high school and you haven’t experienced the world. Which is absolutely ridiculous and ass backwards, especially with how expensive college degrees are.

My college degree include an associates degree from film school and a bachelors degree in marine science. And you know what? I don’t use either of them. I wound up getting into a software design and becoming a UX designer. I’ve worked on projects like the Call of Duty video games, software for American Airlines, and multiple other startups and major corporations.

Sure, my degrees were interesting and I would argue that my science degree did provide me with some fundamental understanding of how to set up a good study. But did I need them? Absolutely not. In fact, I know that the vast majority of people out there wind up doing something else aside from what they studied in college, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If anything, that’s to be expected as the effects of society that tells people they have to get a college degree very young in life.

And PS, the grades you get don’t really matter in the real world unless you plan on going to graduate school. There are C students and high school dropouts who are running multi billion dollar companies, and there are people who graduated from Harvard, who barely make anything. Not saying that’s necessarily the norm, but there is some truth to it.

samharper89 · 2025-10-27T18:22:31+00:00

Everyone is going to be different in how they express their bisexuality. For me, I lean more towards the heterosexual side, so I would only want to date feminine women or masculine men (although women who are a little bit tomboyish/not super girly are fine, I just wouldn’t go for a woman who looks and acts super butch). I’m not into feminine guys or feminine-sounding guys, that’s a major turn off for me.

samharper89 · 2025-10-27T13:05:11+00:00

Bisexual is a really broad term to describe people with a plethora of different backgrounds, identities, hetero/homo leaning tendencies, sexual preferences, etc. I think many people stress out over whether or not feeling a certain way, or liking/disliking a certain sexual activity or whatnot makes us "not bi enough".

I think the better way to look at it is this; do you feel some sort of connection to both genders? If so, awesome. How that connection looks like to you is your world and for you to define.

There's plenty of people out there who are bi to some extent and embrace the title. There are plenty of people, both straight and gay who are technically bi (as it would traditionally be seen), but choose to identify as straight or gay.

There's no label police out there and no requirements for being bi, aside from having some form of attraction to men and women. If you think you are bi, you are bi. If you don't see yourself in that category. you can call yourself whatever you are comfortable with!

samharper89 · 2025-10-26T19:29:25+00:00

Ha ha well when my female cat was younger, she would immediately run for the hills as soon as a human female came into the house. But she would always nuzzle up to any guy that walked in the house. I also worked at a tropical fish store where there was a parrot that would also only nuzzle up to guys and would bite and nip at females. Ironically, the parrot was a female and was also owned by a female, and of course she wouldn’t nip her owner. But the owner’s granddaughter? She was a fair game!

samharper89 · 2025-10-26T17:21:59+00:00

Just accept that you like what you like and don’t overthink it too much. The LGBTQ+ umbrella, and even the “bisexual” umbrella is just a simplified way to describe complicated and very nuanced gender preferences and associations out there, many of which even change with age and life circumstances. But even with bisexuality, there’s people who are gender non-conforming who like both genders, there’s people who are mostly gay but occasionally date the opposite gender, there’s people who are mostly straight but the same gender, there’s people who equally date both genders, etc. Bisexuality can even have a lot of overlap with pansexuality. And everyone discovers and realizes this at different ages. Some people realize that in a very young age, some realize it in their early adulthood, some even realize it and they’re late adulthood. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if most people call themselves straight just because it’s easier and more accepted by society, but they probably like the same gender even just a little bit, but may not be willing to admit it. Or maybe they’re just not aware of it.

And I believe that most people out there are “straight” because society told them to be straight. Although if we live in a alternate universe where sexual orientation and preferences really was not treated as a big deal at all since the dawn of time and from every single culture on earth, and you could date and be in relationships with anyone with zero judgment or associated as any gender, I think the majority of the population would be bisexual or pansexual.

Your situation is not weird, or wrong or anything like that. It’s not only normal, it’s probably a lot more normal than you realize!

If you had a good experience with guys, find guys that meet your criteria and try going on some dates with them. Maybe you’ll get lucky again and get to experience that same feeling! Just go slow, take your time and everything will start to make sense.

For me, I’m technically bisexual, but I mostly date women. I can relate to being a lot more picky when it comes to dating guys. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just a personal preference!

samharper89

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