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S.C.
You are in the same age range with my daughter. Every time that I read your posts, I can not help comparing you to her and sometimes myself at your age!
I find it astonishing that you often expresses regrets like someone who is much older. I also often wonder why do you hang around in a retirement forum! IMO, People of your age should be completely engaged in the present and full of hope, dreams and plans for the future.
I am jotting down in blue below what came to my mind when I read your 'should have', 'could have' post!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Serious Conversation
I'm 31, but there have been major and substantive changes since I was 18.
If I were to wake up tomorrow and was 18 again, knowing what I know now, I'd probably do the following.
1) Leave this part of Tennessee immediately and go to a better college. Given current experiences, I'd probably work for a year to establish residency. I'd probably go to Clemson because I like upstate SC. Potentially the Tampa area too. Much better economy, more going on, and more of a can-do attitude than where I am. There is great outdoor recreation here, but aside from that, it's just not a good area.
What stops you from relocating now? You can try to get a job in another state to establish residency then attend college of your choice PART TIME while working. One of my sisters got 2 degrees while working full time (an MBA and a law degree!) while working as a chemical engineer then an IT expert.
My husband changed his career by taking computer classes while working. After he got his second BS in CS, we both quit our jobs, moved to new city to attend graduate schools while raising a baby. I switched my major too - BSs in Physics and Biochemistry to M.S in Metallurgical Engineering and Ph. D. in Materials Science Engineering.
2) Major in something health related. I work in IT. IT jobs cluster in major metropolitan areas. I majored in economics, and while it suited me, you really need to go to grad school to do anything technical with it. Healthcare jobs are especially portable and can be found virtually anywhere.
You can get an advanced IT degree while working! There are so many online courses/programs even from prestigious universities.
It is also never too late to switch your career, to major in a new field (see my comments in section 1). I know two women went to nursing school in their 50's. They were both teachers.
3) I would have done anything to have kept one romantic relationship going. Though that's been almost ten years ago, there's not been anyone like her before or since. I've had other relationships, but never came close to marrying and have been pretty much single for the better part of two years now. I have no desire to have children, but being alone for this long and at my age is a bit wearing.
If you try hard and keep looking, you will find another suitable partner. Many people find their partners MUCH LATER in life than 31!!!.
4) Would have kept my weight down and kept lifting more seriously. When I was in high school, I was a dedicated weightlifter and came close to some state records for my age/size range. While I am not huge by any stretch, I am overweight and work a sedentary desk job. It is difficult to keep the weight off.
Exercises or weight lifting alone DO NOT HELP one to loose weight! You need to monitor your diets and of course try to exercise more. My last job was quite sedentary too (many meetings, being at my desk for teleconference calls, writing plans/reports, online research etc.). However, I always managed to get 10K-15K steps a day (lunch hour walking, pacing in my office while on the phone, taking circuitous routes to bathrooms on upper floors etc.).
5) I would dedicate myself to going to grad school. No one in my family has ever gotten a graduate/professional degree. While it's by far not too late for me now, it doesn't feel like it would be useful in the working world and it seems to difficult to fit in working on-call, often over 40 hr/week job.
Many people go to grad schools later in life and some even get professional degrees. It's never too late. You are ONLY 31!!!
Quite a few people attend grad schools part time while working 40 hr/week job (see some of my examples above).
How about signing up for an online class (graduate level or in another field) and STOP spending times posting at cd forum for a semester to see how it goes ;-)
6) Dedicate more decisions to my own choices. I've made a lot of decisions out of the desire to be close to my family or had to take job offers out of financial desperation. While family is worth a lot, I feel it has cost me things too.
You can make decisions based on your own choices RIGHT NOW! You don't have to wish to be 18 again to do it. It's never too late. JUST DO IT.
I wouldn't want to be 18 again. Unless it was 1968.
I don't envy young people living in today's world. The earth is being ruined by greed and overpopulation. Forests are disappearing, species going extinct en mass. No fish left in the sea.
On the job front, in 20 years AI will be doing 95% of everything. Already it is awknowledged that today's generation faces a lower standard of living than the boomers.
One thing that fascinates me is where technology will end up going. I've seen so many changes from the time I graduated high school to now that it oftentimes doesn't even feel like the same world. Things that seemed like sci-fi (augmented reality comes to mind) then are possible now. The pace of innovation in mobile, AI, VR/AR, seems to be accelerating exponentially. Sometimes I think I'd want to see it, other times it horrifies me.
I worry about the environment. I've seen weird changes. This year, I noticed leaves turning slightly in July. Many trees have full on color now. I am not at a higher elevation. I've never seen trees have beyond a hint of color this early in Tennessee.
S.C.
You are in the same age range with my daughter. Every time that I read your posts, I can not help comparing you to her and sometimes myself at your age!
I find it astonishing that you often expresses regrets like someone who is much older. I also often wonder why do you hang around in a retirement forum! IMO, People of your age should be completely engaged in the present and full of hope, dreams and plans for the future.
I am jotting down in blue below what came to my mind when I read your 'should have', 'could have' post!
I think part of it is how I was raised and part of it is my current location and lifestyle.
I'm an only child and was not close to any of my cousins. I didn't have the sibling interaction. I was kind of bullied in elementary school and didn't really make any friends until middle school. I really didn't interact with people my age much and many of the earliest interactions were negative. I was socialized mostly around people who were old then (mostly Silents and some Greatest Generation). I've always kind of lived in my head - read a lot, played a lot of video games, a lot of "escapism," if you will. I'm also probably on the autism spectrum - I've taken several teats for autism that grade your likelihood on a sliding scale from no autistic traits to a maximum value with a score range indicating increasing likelihood of autism. I am usually near the maximum value on these tests. I just took one and I was 49/50. 32 indicates a strong likelihood of autism. Average scores are in the 10-20 range.
I went to a church growing up that was heavily senior. Most of the people there were at least my grandparents' age, many were older still. When I was a child, I stayed with my grandparents after school until I was in late middle school. Papaw was retired then, but his health was never great. However, he had neighbors that were healthier and I got to know all of them, and many of them took me fishing, gardening, etc. Papaw would have been 86 this year, and aside from one couple who would today be in their early 70s, they were the youngsters on the block. Mr. Browder would be 106 - his wife, 104. Mr. Grayder, still alive, is in his early 90s. Mr. Clark is in his early 90s and also unwell. The Joyners would have been in their 90s. I cannot remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday morning but have no problem recalling ages of people who are long dead.
I want to stay at least another year to build up some tenure on my resume and save more money. The last two times I've moved, I was making under $15/hr and was basically dead broke. I've had eight jobs since 2010, though I combine five of those jobs on my resume as "various contracts." We may be going through a merger, so obviously that creates uncertainty. Fortunately, we should have an up or down vote next week. The merger was local news even when I took the job, the can has been kicked down the road, and it's finally time to get the news. If we merge, I am not throwing everything overboard and taking the first thing that comes along, nor do we know if there will be consolidation. With that said, I am not particularly busy (as you can imagine), make pretty good money, have not been here very long, so I'm understandably nervous that I'm the easy fat to cut.
Another thing I regret is that years went by and I wonder where they went to. My late teens/early 20s were just not notable. I don't feel like anything got accomplished. Other than chasing older women, I didn't do anything wild or even memorable. I should have used those years better. I wasted needless time in college, didn't graduate until I was 24, only worked part-time, never traveled or went anywhere, etc. I moved to Iowa when I was 25, and that's when I feel like I really started living. I should have done the stuff I did at 25 when I was 20.
I'm getting increasingly frustrated being back here. The steady (so far..) job and proximity to family are the only real benefits. I haven't been on a date where I thought there was any long term potential since I moved back here. The little interest I've had has been from people in bad situations. I don't think I've been on a single date with someone who had a regular, full-time job, even if that job wasn't great, since I moved back. There's virtually no social scene. My friends have either moved on, or are so broke themselves they only want me to buy things for them. Honestly, I could drive off today and not miss one damn person other than my immediate family. I feel less integrated with the community than I have anywhere and feel like I'm just passing through. To some perverse extent, a long, protracted layoff process wouldn't bother me, just so I can leave without the family complaining about it and hopefully have enough to find something in the cities I'd actually want to live in.
No place is perfect, and no matter where you go, you bring your own personal baggage with you. I just need to be in a place with more energy, a better economy, and more of a can-do attitude than Rust Belt Tennessee whose best days are clearly behind it.
I wouldn't like to have to start over at 18 in this day and age. However, if such a freak thing happened, you can be sure I would do EVERYTHING the opposite of what I've done in this life.
When the director John Huston was asked what he would do differently if he had his life to live over again he said he would drink more wine and less hard liquor. Can't think of a better answer. I've gotten pretty much everything I ever wanted in life. I have no regrets or unfilfilled goals. But like my Mom once told me, that's because I never wanted much. I do know that I've had good and bad times, successes and failures. But pretty much every failure was the seed of a success later on.
If I could start over I'd drink more wine and less hard liquor.
I feel like that now as I try to raise my two kids, ages 20 & 21. They aren't going anywhere fast. Time is still on their side, but life is short! What would I have done differently? Well, not much.....my health got in the way of just about everything I tried to do. I developed a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis at age 21, and it compromised everything from that point on. I want my kids to "make hay while the sun shines", get a good education, start building credit and savings, and never turn down an opportunity to be happy!
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