Spot on with "lieing about having your shit together", I'm in my 40s and in academia and almost everyone is "just pretending" to be a high functioning adult.

But you don't need to spend your life in front of a computer. You can do all sorts of shit. But people like economic security and that makes "college > soul destroying job" seem appealing. But life can be all sorts of things, as long as you realise you're in control of the choices not the results.

There's a well established trope that at every age, people think there life is about to settle down and stop being as open and free. I was defintely the kind of person who felt that turning 21 was becoming ancient and tbat life was basically over. But each decade has been completely different and often wild, I've done lots of different things, lived in different places and even now I'm married and have a house and all the more "settled" things, I'm confident the last few decades will also be varied and interesting.