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Hmmm... interesting. I wasted so much time during my teens. I smoked up most days from 14-16yo and had zilch, zero, nada to show for it. I woke up from it one day and realized everyone was going off to University and College and getting jobs and starting lives and I was constantly getting kicked out on my @ss and "couch surfing." I had so much catching up to do that by the time I was 18, I was pretty set on not wasting another a minute.
I'm 32 now and my 20's were a time for huge change, successes and failures but I'm happy to say I didn't waste any time. I'm happy with what I have and I have a plan for what I'm doing next and I know exactly where I'm going. So much better than being so stoned on a dodgy mattress in someone's attic. I haven't had to play catch up. I kept busy all through my 20's.
At least I learned a lesson from the mistakes of my teens.
This is so encouraging. Congratulations on waking up. A lot of people never do.
I can roll with this, best to get the crazy stuff out of your system then worry about settling down in your 30s. Everyone I know did the opposite and the fallout is beginning for most of them. Started families at 18-20 and the expectation to make 50K+ a year by age 22. I hate to see them during the midlife crisis trying to recapture their glory days before they turned 21 haha.
First off,I was one of the serious people. I became a nurse at 22,so my career started when I was young. I didn't party,drink,or smoke. Seems ok right?
Wrong. I missed out on partying and being" carefree".
I didn't start wanting to party until 28,and by then I may have been to "old".
I say get the fun out of your system while in your 20's. There will be plenty of time to develop a career. I know many nurses start their careers later in life. 90% of my coworkers didn't have careers in nursing until their late 30's.
Regarding relationships,I would tell a young woman nowadays to find a husband,then develop a career.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I regret NoT having partied like other 20 year olds did.
I partied at 20. No one said not to party. I just made a point of finding a balance. Get everything done, then go nuts and don't show up to work hung over. I've seen friends in their twenties finish school, get a job and get a relationship. But then they just sat there. They didn't push their career and they didn't push their relationships. They wasted time. Taking things seriously in your twenties doesn't mean don't go out and party.
Hollywood and the media wants everyone to live in an extended adolescent spent on "finding yourself" and "building a career" until 40 years of age and then rely on fertility drugs to have babies. It's naive and unrealistic.
First off,I was one of the serious people. I became a nurse at 22,so my career started when I was young. I didn't party,drink,or smoke. Seems ok right?
Wrong. I missed out on partying and being" carefree".
I didn't start wanting to party until 28,and by then I may have been to "old".
I say get the fun out of your system while in your 20's. There will be plenty of time to develop a career. I know many nurses start their careers later in life. 90% of my coworkers didn't have careers in nursing until their late 30's.
Regarding relationships,I would tell a young woman nowadays to find a husband,then develop a career.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I regret NoT having partied like other 20 year olds did.
I agree with this poster 100%.
I too have always been the serious person. I chose a wrong major (Art history) just because I wanted to be accepted by UCLA. I had tremendous passion of creating portraits, but I gave up on art simply because I didn't want to be a starving artist. I also had dreams of being a professional athlete. Water polo is one of my true passion. But I've been told it is just a silly sports.
After my first boyfriend committed suicide, I went back to Art school. Art makes me happy, makes me feel alive!
Although I missed my prime time of being a professional water polo player, I played all kinds of extreme sports from bungee jumping to scuba diving. I realized that life is too short to waste on useless things like so called security.
I was hanging out more with people who are professionally or socially “important” than people with whom I felt a genuine connection/whom I knew actually care about me. (Now I realized, none of these people I used to hang out with have truly made me happy.)
I beat myself up over small failures and refused to acknowledge all of the wonderful things that I had done and were capable of. (Life was tiring. Being a perfectionist is suicide. )
It turns out that the American Dream was never my dream. Rather, it was competing with my dream, clouding over my revelatory desire to be a professional water polo player, or a professional artist.
Now, I learned to relax, I learned to do the things make me happy. I am glad that I am still in my 20s, and I finally realize what is the most important thing to me. I just want to enjoy my youth and live my life to the fullest.
Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
Elbert Hubbard
It's basically a response to the emerging pop culture idea of our 20s being a decade in which we can still shrug off developing ourselves until we are in our 30's. The speaker talks a lot about relationships and how we can spend time wasting our 20's on people who are a bad match for us and then later down the road just settle because we feel pressured to do so and put off getting to know ourselves and what we want.
Nice find and I agree with her to some extent. I just turned 30 years and still have completed some life goals beside collegr which I accomplished before I was 25. Right now Im looking for a partner, marriage, family, move out of NYC and a piece of the American dream. Im trying to get this done before I turn 35. Problem with me being a single guy during my twenties, most women I met where either shallow or naiev and their was nothing I can do about, and it is what it is but its their loss. I do have some regrets but also I am much more bolder person now compared to my twenties. Im just happy I got through my twenties finicially ok with no college debt to pay off and no child support to pay to women. Now Im trying to take serious steps in life for my 30s. Playtime was for my twenties and thats over.
I'm in a different boat - I'm only starting to enjoy my 20s now after a rocky and very serious late teens - 22 (current.) I'm focused on writing right now but I also want to enjoy my early 20s.
I too have always been the serious person. I chose a wrong major (Art history) just because I wanted to be accepted by UCLA. I had tremendous passion of creating portraits, but I gave up on art simply because I didn't want to be a starving artist. I also had dreams of being a professional athlete. Water polo is one of my true passion. But I've been told it is just a silly sports.
After my first boyfriend committed suicide, I went back to Art school. Art makes me happy, makes me feel alive!
Although I missed my prime time of being a professional water polo player, I played all kinds of extreme sports from bungee jumping to scuba diving. I realized that life is too short to waste on useless things like so called security.
I was hanging out more with people who are professionally or socially “important” than people with whom I felt a genuine connection/whom I knew actually care about me. (Now I realized, none of these people I used to hang out with have truly made me happy.)
I beat myself up over small failures and refused to acknowledge all of the wonderful things that I had done and were capable of. (Life was tiring. Being a perfectionist is suicide. )
It turns out that the American Dream was never my dream. Rather, it was competing with my dream, clouding over my revelatory desire to be a professional water polo player, or a professional artist.
Now, I learned to relax, I learned to do the things make me happy. I am glad that I am still in my 20s, and I finally realize what is the most important thing to me. I just want to enjoy my youth and live my life to the fullest.
Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
Elbert Hubbard
I guess some of this depends on personality. I'm not a perfectionist. And I have a natural tendency to treat life as a joke and laugh things off too easily. I started cutting class in middle school. The last thing I needed people telling me becoming an adult would have been "to relax and enjoy an extended adolescence."
It's basically a response to the emerging pop culture idea of our 20s being a decade in which we can still shrug off developing ourselves until we are in our 30's. The speaker talks a lot about relationships and how we can spend time wasting our 20's on people who are a bad match for us and then later down the road just settle because we feel pressured to do so and put off getting to know ourselves and what we want.
I agree...for most people what you do in your 20's is what defines you going forward or it is the basis for it. I'm not talking about relationships either, I mean about getting your ducks in a row education/carreer wise.
I partied at 20. No one said not to party. I just made a point of finding a balance. Get everything done, then go nuts and don't show up to work hung over. I've seen friends in their twenties finish school, get a job and get a relationship. But then they just sat there. They didn't push their career and they didn't push their relationships. They wasted time. Taking things seriously in your twenties doesn't mean don't go out and party.
This is a good way to put it. I know couples who got married out of high school and got jobs and for a while I wondered if I was wrong by not envying them, but what you just said put it in perspective. Many of them are just chasing a fantasy where they want to create the image of a perfect life, but many of them have grown stagnant during a period that should be their prime time. My friends coincidentally brought up a conversation earlier about where we see ourselves being in in the near future after we finish school and a lot of us had a hard time answering. I guess that's good in a way since it means we aren't just settling for our current position.
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