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Dear Young People


monkeygirl
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I'm about to turn 31 in a few weeks, and I've recently realized I've long passed the "I don't give a shit" phase.

Normal little everyday rules that everyone seems to fret about, or the things that people worry about when it comes to how everyone perceives them, just don't really matter that much to me anymore. This morning I was driving to work and my car started acting up, and I quickly realized I'd probably need to replace the alternator. Even as recently as five years ago, I'd have fretted over that and freaked out that it would be a $300 deal. Now that I'm "grown up" and have my stuff in order, I don't care. If anything, it's just a minor inconvenience.

The only stuff I really worry about anymore is time. Either how much free time I have during the week, or how much more time it will be until I can retire early. One sucky thing about getting older is that you get jaded about the world once you realize a lot of things about it, and you don't necessarily care about your career or any long term things anymore further than what you can do with your own long term plans.

Yeah, getting older sucks. But once you realize what you should or shouldn't care about, it's a lot easier.

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  • 1 month later...

To me, the way that time speeds up so much is far more disconcerting than the number of actual years. Plus I amuse myself with that by also counting months still.

I first started noticing this in my 20s. It just gets faster and faster after that. That was literally half a lifetime ago for me now. I remember feeling a LOT of trepidation in my 20s. I went through a quarter life crises something serious. I felt I squandered my teen years. I avoided close relationships as a teen, because I didn't want to have any sense of responsibility for anyone. Having a girlfriend meant having to have a job, and both meant less time for me. So I partied and goofed off when I should have gone to university, because when girlfriend and job happened anyway, I felt trapped in a dead end situation and left behind by people who seemed to be doing things with their lives.

 

I'm about to turn 31 in a few weeks, and I've recently realized I've long passed the "I don't give a ****" phase.

Never trust anyone over 30 if you are younger than 30. Never trust anyone under 30 if you are over 30. The older you get, the harder a time you have seeing where the next generation is coming from. Ultimately, of course, the old fogies are wrong and the younger generation DOESN'T end up driving civilization to complete ruin. They work s××t out, just like everyone does. Still, I remember in my 30s figuring that people under 30 were frivolous and didn't really get what life is about, especially after I stopped having jobs and girlfriends and started having a career and a family. Especially once you have kids. That's a big BIG responsibility, and everything before that seems so frivolous and pointless.

 

One sucky thing about getting older is that you get jaded about the world once you realize a lot of things about it, and you don't necessarily care about your career or any long term things anymore further than what you can do with your own long term plans.

Yer getting ahead of yourself there, young whipper-snapper. THAT'S how I started thinking when I hit my 40s. People in their 30s and their God damned careers and families. Especially kids. Thirtysomethings and their God damned children. If baby isn't the center of the universe 24/7/365, they'll have low self esteem and grow up to be failures. You bust your ass for the sake of that stuff, when it turns out that the world would have gotten by every bit as well without you as with you. Your kids will turn out alright - or not - despite your best efforts, provided you don't completely botch it. Career and family have their rewards - assuming they work out, but after fifteen years of it you wonder if it was really worth the price you paid. At times, now that I'm 42, I wonder if I really didn't have it right after all when I was 16: stay out of personal entanglements so as to not have any more obligations than I really have to so that I have less stress and therefore more peace of mind, fun and freedom.

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Sometimes I feel like I hopped in a Delorean, fired it up to 88 mph, and here I am. I'm the one guy that hasn't changed at all in the past 15 years, where everyone else I know has (mostly for the worse). It's a strange thing to witness. I'm used to getting bad news from my old friends. Some are so down about life that they're out of my life completely, even though they know I'm here for them if they want someone to talk to.

 

Quite a few of them are bitter as hell about life. They had a certain picture or what life would be like at 40 and are flat out pissed that it didn't work out the way they wanted. Seems like every conversation is about how work, some person, or the world in general fucked them over in some way. I'll always give them my time, but my god is it exhausting.

 

I think the biggest difference between me and them is that I never had any grand ambitions about life. I'm 43 now and I live life like I was 23. What I've learned over the years is that most people think life owes them something and when they don't get it they pout about it and then make horrible life changing decisions that make things even worse. It's whatever solves their short term problems at the expense of their long term problems, and when you fast forward 10 years or so they realize just how bad they effd up and there's really no going back.

 

So if I were to give a young person advice I would say stay in school (duh), take care of your body(exercise AND diet), get used to being alone (loneliness leads to really bad decisions, being cool with yourself opens doors), find a career that suits you( don't follow your dreams. Be practical and realistic), and by all means do not give a shit about what people think about you. The Joneses of the world can go fuck themselves.

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I agree for the most part except for the not following your dreams. Thats bad advice. I say follow them, but be smart about how you execute them. Don't put all your eggs in the one basket. But if you don't follow your dreams you'll kick yourself for not even trying and its better to try and fail than to never try at all. Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will anyhow. Giving up before you start is a pu$sy move. Though if your dreams don't work out, don't be such a stubborn idiot that you get bitter. I think your friend's experiences say more about your friends than it says about ambition and dreams, Tex.

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Yeah. Sounds more like you're friends with bitter losers. My life hasn't turned out how I expected, but it's absolutely not a bad thing. For the things I'm unhappy or dissatisfied with, rather than get bitter or depressed (well okay, sometimes I get a little depressed), I'm working on changing them, even if it takes a long time.

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Sometimes I feel like I hopped in a Delorean, fired it up to 88 mph, and here I am. I'm the one guy that hasn't changed at all in the past 15 years, where everyone else I know has (mostly for the worse). It's a strange thing to witness. I'm used to getting bad news from my old friends. Some are so down about life that they're out of my life completely, even though they know I'm here for them if they want someone to talk to.

 

Quite a few of them are bitter as hell about life. They had a certain picture or what life would be like at 40 and are flat out pissed that it didn't work out the way they wanted. Seems like every conversation is about how work, some person, or the world in general ****ed them over in some way. I'll always give them my time, but my god is it exhausting.

 

I think the biggest difference between me and them is that I never had any grand ambitions about life. I'm 43 now and I live life like I was 23. What I've learned over the years is that most people think life owes them something and when they don't get it they pout about it and then make horrible life changing decisions that make things even worse. It's whatever solves their short term problems at the expense of their long term problems, and when you fast forward 10 years or so they realize just how bad they effd up and there's really no going back.

 

So if I were to give a young person advice I would say stay in school (duh), take care of your body(exercise AND diet), get used to being alone (loneliness leads to really bad decisions, being cool with yourself opens doors), find a career that suits you( don't follow your dreams. Be practical and realistic), and by all means do not give a **** about what people think about you. The Joneses of the world can go **** themselves.

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Yeah. Sounds more like you're friends with butter losers. My life hasn't turned out how I expected, but it's absolutely not a bad thing. For the things I'm unhappy or dissatisfied with, rather than get bitter or depressed (well okay, sometimes I get a little depressed), I'm working on changing them, even if it takes a long time.

 

Can you blame them? I hate when I lose my butter

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One sucky thing about getting older is that you get jaded about the world once you realize a lot of things about it, and you don't necessarily care about your career or any long term things anymore further than what you can do with your own long term plans.

Yer getting ahead of yourself there, young whipper-snapper. THAT'S how I started thinking when I hit my 40s. People in their 30s and their God damned careers and families. Especially kids. Thirtysomethings and their God damned children. If baby isn't the center of the universe 24/7/365, they'll have low self esteem and grow up to be failures. You bust your ass for the sake of that stuff, when it turns out that the world would have gotten by every bit as well without you as with you. Your kids will turn out alright - or not - despite your best efforts, provided you don't completely botch it. Career and family have their rewards - assuming they work out, but after fifteen years of it you wonder if it was really worth the price you paid. At times, now that I'm 42, I wonder if I really didn't have it right after all when I was 16: stay out of personal entanglements so as to not have any more obligations than I really have to so that I have less stress and therefore more peace of mind, fun and freedom.

 

Thing is, I want as little responsibility as possible. I want to not give a crap so I can still live like a teenager. The idea of a "career" is really kind of a joke anyways. You bust your ass for decades for what? Just a slim chance that you'll find a bit of luck and meet your expectations of success? Why waste your life away for something that in all likelihood won't come? Odds are that it won't, and even if it does it will be because of something totally outside of your control that fell into your lap anyways.

 

While my only real striving is to have the financial security of an adult at the same time as having the carefree lifestyle of a teenager, there's one thing I know I'm beyond jaded about: I don't care about trying anymore. In my latter years in high school, throughout my college career, and early part of my adult career, I worked my ass off because of the promise of something that might come later. It never did. I only got the same suburban cookie cutter end result as everyone else. Now I'm really only working hard to preserve it. As long as I can do that enough to reach my own now-limited personal goals and perhaps check out of that cookie cutter lifestyle early, I'm okay with that.

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Honestly, your hard work got you the suburban cookie cutter dream. It's not easy to come by anymore. By many standards, you are quite successful. With that attitude, though, you will likely never achieve higher than that. So as long as you're ok with that, so be it. I find that most people who are high achievers are pretty much workaholics. Personally, I'm ok with cookie cutter. It's better than most of my family has. I live in a nice, safe neighborhood in a good school district and a reasonable commute to work. I'm content. My husband is ready to start tearing the house and yard apart, though. He values his own tastes and comfort more than I do.

 

I work hard at work because I enjoy what I do and find it intellectually stimulating. I do not do a lot of overtime, though, because I'm not in a good place in life to do that (2 little kids and working spouse), and because I enjoy downtime. I do have coworkers who put in 60 hours a week, but they have stay-at-home spouses and I think they just like money and don't really want to be home with their kids anyway. More the home with their kids thing, though.

 

Also D-Ray, don't think I didn't miss that last part about checking out early. Seriously, buddy, are you seeing someone about your depression? Is your wife doing better?

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The only thing I bug the kids/younger people in my life about is SAVING MONEY. Cripes, when I do the math and realize how ****ing much money I could

have for retirement if I had just learned the discipline of saving a small but constant amount? GAWD. Everything else, including taking care of your

teeth is personal, subjective and different for everybody.

 

Also, why don't younger humans listen to and learn from older people? It's as if we each go through struggles that take us decades and could be honed

]down to a few weeks if we'd learn from each others' trials. Or did I answer that question in my first paragraph?

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Yeah, I think you did.

Mostly, we're experiential beings who aren't very good at processing data, and most people are even worse at sharing data that they've collected.

 

On the other hand, I've already got a decent amount saved for retirement, way more than my dad had when he died, and I've still got decades left.

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