1. Have any of you lost your way but found your way back? If so, how?
Not sure I'd say I lost my way, but it certainly took me a long time to get where I am. I had the basic concept of FIRE in mind as far back as the early '90s. I always knew I didn't want to work a normal job until I was in my 60s. But getting there quickly just was not realistic when paired with decisions I made about having a family, facilitating my wife's job as a SAHM, working in a career that had at least some meaning beyond money, and living a halfway decent middle class existence. There just wasn't enough money to facilitate a 50+% savings rate for much of my career. We also made some blunders along the way, chief among them being allowing our spending to grow along with my income, until one day I realized I had finally achieved an upper middle class income, but we were still spending way more than half of it. So that's when I got serious about FIRE and MMM. From there it took about 5 years of concerted tracking, cost-cutting, saving, and investing to reach the point where I could quit my job. But of course that was just the final leap from a 20-year head start of living within our means, avoiding expensive debt, and saving and investing what we could.
That story may not seem very pertinent to your situation. But I think the take-away message is this: Getting to FIRE is a marathon, not a sprint, even if you are disciplined enough to live an ERE lifestyle. Even that road will take you a number of years, and if you have no joy in your life, you won't make it to the end. You have to find the balance between making/saving piles of money and living a life that you want to live. For me, that balance involved working a full-time career for 25 years, because that allowed me to have a life at the front end instead of just becoming a saving and investing machine, and then trying to have a life later.
2. In my current situation (back in school, no stable job or income), what would you suggest I do now and for the summer to make the best out of my situation? I am talking about rebuilding myself, adding to my savings, and improving my job prospects. Would it be a good idea for me to get any job out there, even if it pays minimum wage?
That all depends on how much money you have, how fast you are going through it, how long school will take, and what your earning prospects are once you finish school. Obviously if you can tolerate working and going to school at the same time, that will start rebuilding your savings faster. But the point about rebuilding yourself is important. I said it before, but it bears repeating: at all times, you need a life that you want to live; it can't just be 100% delayed gratification for years on end.
3. How would I find an ideal job that has the right balance of income and stress? Or do I just have to tough it out as long as it pays okay since work is not supposed to be fun? I have not yet found a job that I love. And I discovered some of the most stressful jobs out there are also some of the lowest-paying
If you read through this, I thank you. I would appreciate your advice.
I don't think the ideal job exists. I can't say I ever really liked any job that I had, despite choosing a career field that was meaningful to me. I mean, if I was just working for fun and not money, I don't think I would have chosen any of the jobs I had. But I found work that had enough meaning and was interesting enough that I could tolerate doing it for years at a time. Heck, some days I even felt the satisfaction of a job well done.
It's not rocket science, and there is no magic formula. Start by identifying your aptitudes and interests, then explore career fields related to those. See how much training and experience is required, then ask yourself if you're willing to make that investment. And then approach it with the knowledge that you are still going to experience a lot of stress and frustration on a daily basis. That's why they call it work. But if it's work that has at least some meaning and/or enjoyment for you, then you are much more likely to stick it out for how ever many years it takes for you to reach FI. And the work you want to do might change a couple of times along the way. At least three times during my 25-year career, I got burned out to the point that I had to change jobs (though still within my overall field).