This is going to be a long- cringe inducing -story that eventually ties back into my career, so feel free to skip, I just need to get this off of my chest.
Over the past 5 months I have achieved practically everything a young man dreams of after graduation. I moved away from home to a different state in a new city, I have my own apartment and live alone, and I'm a part of a company that treats me well and gives me a fat salary. In every logic aspect, I'm living well above my means. But I hate it.
A few days before, my girlfriend broke up with me, and it destroyed me. She's been the love of my life, my best friend, my partner through everything. She and I have wildly different careers, I'm a civil engineer and she's a prescribed wildland burner. I stay in one place near a city, she travels the country through Northwest Youth Corp. Through our time together she has shown me so much this world has to offer, trails, gardens, crazy weather, I saw the beauty of nature and ecosystems from her perspective. She broke up with me because she realized our paths were different, that it couldn't work between us long-term. She wanted to continue traveling for years doing this, and she didn't know how long it would be before she wanted to "settle down" with someone. I was begging and sobbing to her, telling her I could make it work, but she assured me that it wasn't me that was the issue. She didn't want to lead me on, thinking we wanted the same things in life, and she was sorry about it all. Ultimately, there was nothing I could do to change her mind.
Now, she gets to travel to Oregon for her new job, working in the forests, and I'm stuck here at the office 10 hours a day. I'm happy for her, happy that she is finally doing what she always wanted to do, but it's so painful. I know that if you love someone, you let them go, but I don't think I'll be able to recover from this. I only got into this professional just because it was stable, I don't have a burning passion for it, "work to live" you know?
But god, I have a burning passion for her, and the one career I chose came into conflict with her. I want to appreciate the outside world more, see what she saw, and do something that would actually make me happy. I don't want to climb the corporate ladder, sell my soul for a 6-figure salary, and marry a church girl and live the rest of my life in one place. I want what she has, I want it for myself.
I'm thinking about quitting this company, and engineering all together, at the end of this year. I don't care about the money I'm losing out on, or the uncertainty this would bring, I want fulfillment, I want her no matter how I'll have to wait. It's stupid and foolish, but I'm almost 23 and still young, if I don't do this I'm afraid that regret will haunt me for the rest of my life. Is there ANY path, any career, any opportunity I could work towards that would help me?