I debated whether to post this from the Bureaucrat account because it's srs bsns, but I'm fully committed to the bit because it brings me joy.

But idk what to do about my career situation and am either looking for advice or just to commiserate. I have golden handcuffs that I don't know how to shed. I want to do something that I feel has actual value to society or at least doesn't make me hate my work day.

I work fully remote in the US in a non-tech job and make enough money to live comfortably in a low - medium cost of living area along with my partner's wages (shit like Boston and NYC is way out of budget still). So like I'm lucky and I don't have anything real to complain about, given that we have users on here who rely on the mutual aid comm to stay float sometimes.

But I've worked in the same organization for 5 years and this specific job for 2 of those. It's very heavily public facing and I'm in private 1:1 meetings all day. I couldn't say this to my co-workers, but I despise a large portion of the people I serve because they're expected to be college educated but apparently can't read very simple information, seemingly don't even know how to use computers, and can't follow deadlines. They then pour all their stress out on me by asking me to help them last minute because that's my job.

Idealists in my role would say "that's what we're here for" and I love the moments I get to help someone with something genuine like going through their options if a family member died and they need to disconnect for a while. Taking that stress away feels good because it's a situation I can empathize with. I can't empathize with not doing a simple google search before wasting 30 minutes of someone else's time (because that's what our time slot is for, even if their question takes 2 minutes). Those former moments are rare and I feel like a babysitter otherwise. It makes me feel like I'm just spinning my wheels and will be wasting my valuable life force on bullshit until I die. Like nothing has changed since I escaped my teenage retail work.

The problem is that pivoting to pretty much any job I'm interested in (I don't even know WHAT I'm interested in tbh) would require going back to school for a master's degree, potentially taking an uncomfortable pay cut in the meantime because it's really hard to study and work full-time, and coming out at the other end with 20k less dollars (on top of my 20k existing student debt) than I had but making maybe 2 - 3k more a year. I also support several of our family members due to medical circumstances and have to occasionally cover someone's entire month of rent, assist with buying food, medical bills, etc. Which I am very happy to be able to do, but it also adds to the emotional burden, since if I can't help, there's nobody else who can.

There's no world where it's cost effective and doesn't just drain the savings we've finally been able to start accumulating. Which is something neither of our families have ever been able to do.

But I can't keep doing this job either. And I can't keep living in the middle of nowhere just to save money because I basically have 0 friends or real support nearby other than my partner.

So I'm just wondering if someone has been a similar position of having to leave a relatively comfortable career, dealt with being a financial caretaker for family/friends, learned to cope with a job they hate, or anything else they think might help.