I dated a girl in college, and we were deeply in love. So much so that we got engaged. The one problem was that her family didn't approve of her dating me because of my race. She had initially been hesitant to introduce me to them, but I had insisted that she do it. When they threatened to disown her if she married me, she said that we should just do it and live our lives together. But I was too much of a coward to follow through and tried instead to convince her family to accept me. They never did and our relationship feel apart.
I've never met someone that I care about the way I cared about her. Huge what if.
I had a similar experience. Her father threatened to fly over and take her back forcefully if she didn't stop dating me. She told him she stopped but kept seeing me.
Eventually she hoped to elope. She also had a deadline for leaving the country, visa etc... I wasn't as sure as you sounded tho and decided even though things were great we had not been together long enough to get married and she shouldn't give up her family for me.
Two years after she got back they made her choose a husband from one of 3 from a matchmaker. She said she wasn't in love with the guy but she was doing her duty.
Sorry that happened to you. I had a similar experience not being approved for being different with my first high school crush. We both liked each other as much as young kids can like each other. What surprised me was when it came time to ask her to date formally, she didn't seem interested. This was surprising to me based on all of our interactions and I found out a couple of months later from her friend that it was because of me being "different" and fear of how her family would react if she dated someone "different". She didn't want to upset me so she never told me, but damn it hurt just as bad to hear it from someone else.
So what's my regret? Well there's a couple but the biggest one is that instead of embracing being different and who I was and where I came from, I instead tried to hide it as best I could. I avoided anything to do with my native culture or language because I think I was so hurt internally that someone who appeared to have feelings for me would put them aside for fear of their family's reaction. I even gave up my interests that I feared were too nerdy and contributed to my being "different", after all I am on hacker news so there's some nerd in me, right?
Ended up going off to college in a big city school where different was normal and got back to my roots and interests and this put me on a wonderful path that lead to great success early in my career, stronger relationships with my family and culture, and a much happier life. It feels good to embrace "you", even if some small-town folk may think it's "different".
My secondary regret is that I never reached back out to her to see if she still had similar feelings or maybe tried to get a relationship going on as more mature adults. I've thought about her a good bit but I think what I've realized is that it's not so much her that I'm interested in, it's that all I wanted was to be accepted by her and that maybe if I were to be accepted, I could prove to myself that I'm really not "different".
Always had an obsessive personality. Raised Christian. Always had a bent for pushing boundaries. Got interested in the nuerochemistry of psychoactive substances. Got very involved in educating myself about drug usage, until I was finally comfortable trying them.
Queue ~6 years of polysubstance abuse, wasted money, and fake ass friends. Did everything under the sun I could get my hands on. I think the list of unique drugs I did was something like 40. I was high on at least something every day for years. Most days more than 1 thing.
I never got truly "hooked" on anything thankfully. I just loved being high. What I didn't realize was that the opportunity cost was enormous. Every second I was in my room fucked out of my gourd staring at the ceiling was a second that I wasn't out making friends. Being a normal person. It was a really solitary and lonesome existence, just retreating further and further into my own head each day. Additionally, being a "drug guy" just completely shuts the door to a whole strata of people : e.g. good luck meeting a woman that shares your Christian morals if you are a drug enthusiast.
Now I'm off the bullshit. Straightened my life out, graduated college, gainfully employed. Etc. But I feel that I've missed the boat on having a fulfilling social life. I don't really know how to meet people. And whenever I talk with people I can't help but feel like I'm some kind of alien.
I'm working on it. But it's so hard to know how to work on it. Especially now that I work from home, and live alone in a suburb.
Regarding social skills, I feel like I can relate to how you describe your situation. I was extremely socially anxious when I was younger and basically avoided any social interactions I could. Throughout highschool and college I never had any friends to speak of or dated. I mostly shut myself away with video games and other solitary interests.
I moved to a new city away from my family when I was 27 and that was when I finally pushed myself to start changing things as the loneliness really hit me. I started going to meetup events and work lunches with people. I started reading up on social skills and trying my hand at dating. Roughly 5 years since then I've actually done pretty well for myself, made some good friends, had some good experiences with dating, and I'm rather happy with how things have shaped out. I'm still kind of awkward socially but gotten more comfortable with putting myself out there anyway and found that a lot of people don't really mind.
Just chiming in to say how proud I am of you, as I’m went and still going though something similar. Its scary and hard and you get burned a lot but I wouldn’t trade the friends I made and the relationships I’ve invested in since becoming more in touch and open, including my family, are my absolute proudest accomplishments
I am of the opinion that people who have gone though this are more empathetic caring people
Since I'm getting out and working on something similar right now - is there anything(s) you'd recommend in particular for the reading part of learning?
The opportunity cost is something I've never thought of before. Thank you for that insight because it has made me start thinking about things I'm doing that, while not necessarily harmful, may be coming at the expense of things I'll regret deferring when I'm older.
Congratulations for putting that behind you. If you were raised with church as part of your life, you may actually have an advantage when it comes to developing friends at this point in your life. I've seen some strong atheists say that they envy the way churches can help one create strong friendships and community. That isn't to say it isn't still a lot of work on your part, but there may be a lot of opportunities if you can find a good church community to participate in.
It’s never too late. I consider myself very isolated and introverted, but over the years collected a small circle of friends who accept me for who I am and also have gone through similar things. I have an old coworker, a couple of friends from the gym, and someone I met at 35 that may become my best friend. I ask I don’t say this to brag but that just because you missed out before does not mean you have to stay lonely.
Just be open, put yourself out there, be polite to everyone but respect your own boundaries, and don’t take it personally if things don’t pan out right away. A lot of my close relationships are ones that were background characters for a long time too , but randomly we were brought back together. There’s no template to life and it’s poison to compare yourself to others. Just start taking control of what you want your life to be like and I promise it is a skill like anything else, you just gotta practice even if you fall
You will find your people. You looked underneath a stone not many people turn over.
I don't have such a drug story, but I do feel like an alien often. I tend to only be capable of socializing with people who deeply align with my goals and ambitions. Those being: calisthenics, software, fitness, coding, cooking, being organized, etc.
I don't give myself a hard time for seeking a 'strata' of people, etc.
Be selective. Find the people only you want. Be an alien.
Fellow alien here. Agree with Andre. Just embrace who you are and give it time. You've got a lot of life left to live and plenty of time to find fellow aliens to hang with.
Yeah, similar but not so bad. Spent a lot of nights and weekends with drinks and friends. Now I'm finding we're not so well connected if we're not all drunk and you can't keep on like that too long without great cost. Too many of my friends have slipped into alcoholism or major health issues.
I'm in a city so there are options, but figuring out the social world without booze is a lot.
(Please ignore my following questions if they make you uncomfortable or you find them offensive)
1. What was your favorite drug you ever tried?
2. What was your least favorite drugs you ever tried?
3. What was your best combination of substances?
4. Do you feel like any of your drug usage has affected your cognition in anyway?
5. Do you ever miss it?
I only ask these questions out of pure curiosity, and I do no intend to change behaviors with the information that you may provide -- as in, I am not going to try new substances depending on your answers. I personally use Cannabis, and I feel like I have definitely noticed both benefits and harm from it. There are no free lunches after all.
Anyway, as some random Internet stranger, I am proud of you, and I hope you are proud of yourself for how far you have come. It seems like you went to a version of Hell and came back, and that is not something many can say. I wish you the all best.
1) Good cocaine is hard to beat. 3-HO-PCE is the craziest I've done. Extremely powerful drug. You know the wolf of wall street scene where they OD on quaaludes? It was like that + psychedelia + constant distortion of time and space perception.
2) Plenty of real shitty ones. You eat the cotton out of a benzedrine inhaler and it gives you an amphetamine type high. constricts your blood vessels, makes you sweat bullets, and the taste and smell of it emanates from every inch of your body. Its awful. 3-FMA was awful as well. 0 euphoria or otherwise positive effects but was absolutely fucking wired for like 3 days. Hexen and other cathinone derivatives absolutely such. speedy high for 1 hour and then you feel like shit and redosing only helps like 50% so by the end of the day you're a shell of a person.
3) In general psychedelics + dissociatives was a favorite: Deschloroketamine + a synthetic tryptamine or phenthylamine. low dose benedryl and low dose cough syrup was crazy. Acid and cocaine was awesome, and one of the only experiences which I don't really regret at all. I don't wish, or feel the need, to replicate it though.
4) Yes, but not in the typical way people think - e.g. its not like I feel less intelligent or clearheaded. instead, the biggest effect is that I've basically hijacked my reward system. I suppose you could call it anhedonia, but not to a clinically significant degree. Additionally, I feel like I've made connections in my brain that were not previously there. Like sometimes seeing certain patterns or hearing certain music will briefly remind me of a feeling I had at some point while high. It's hard to explain, its not like a "flashback", but more like a traumatic stress response? its very uncomfortable, but its brief. Also my night vision is significantly worse.
5) No. When I think back to the type of shit I got up to all I feel is regret and disgust. I don't remember times that I was high fondly. And the thought of doing it again is repellent to me. A while back, a friend of mine got their hands on Ketamine, which I never got to try while I was in my hay day. I thought, what the hell, I'll cross it off the list. I did a dose of it and immediately regretted it. I just kept thinking "what the fuck is the point of this?" gave the rest of it away.
Just as a disclaimer - a lot of the shit I mentioned here are designer drugs. These have very little history of human consumption and as such are inherently very unsafe, because long term effects cannot be evaluated. I expect I will have some health complications later in life as a result. I cannot stress enough that doing this shit is a bad idea. I know you said you didn't plan to try anything, but to any other reader. Really. Stay away. Not worth it.
I've had a similar experience. It's hard sometimes for me to reflect on all the wasted time, but what's gone is gone. I do my best to try not to ruin today thinking about yesterday.
Just keep putting yourself out there, focusing on what you do have, and taking it day by day friend.
Not in my experience. You just need to belong to a group outside of work. It might be a church, a volunteer group, a community group, whatever. I have so many friends from outside of work groups.
I met many friends through having season tickets for my local NHL team, met friends playing adult "beer league" hockey, met friends traveling for away games in different cities, and I even have friends internationally whom I've never met in person but still remain in contact with.
I would love to hear your list of 40 drugs because I did a lot of them in my 20s but I still couldn’t name that many. My list would be nicotine, marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, LSD, shrooms, ecstasy, adderall, oxy, dmt, 2cb, tramadol, percocet, ayahuasca and mescaline. Other than that the only things I can think of is heroin, crack and meth. That’s only 18.
That's just from memory. I know there's some ketamine and psilocybin derivatives I'm missing there. I also counted alcohol, psuedophedrine, ephedrine, nicotine, and caffeine.
The list of "designer" drugs is endless. There are hundreds out there and more discovered each day.
If you're interested in learning more about this sort of thing lookup Alexander Shulgin. He wrote some books documenting his experience as a chemist synthesizing novel psychedelics. Many of these have since seen mass production in china and distribution in the western world. For a while there you could just straight up buy most that shit from the internet - not even the dark net.
Hi there, you're kind of me but in reverse. Raised Christian, initially very socially awkward as a kid and even in high school, it wasnt until my junior year in college that i really opened up and now that i'm "established" professionally and socially, I've been looking into dipping my toes into the world of psychedelics.
I'd love to chat more if you're interested. You can find my email in my profile.
There are a lot of people like you. Adults looking for friends out of college or work. Just expanding the social circle, hanging out online and if possible IRL at times.
I suggest joining communities for topics that interest you, for starters. You're likely to meet some like minded people and make a few a friends. This happened for me every time I tried a new hobby.
i feel like an alien too but without the drug part (maybe the internet). Not hooked on anything yet still unable to pursue meaningful relationships outside the preexisting few I have left. Lately I stopped expressing ideas to people, since most of them are just rejected or get swallowed up by the void. All i'm trying to say is that there *might* be something more to the social part.
You gotta keep trying. Also could be you’re in the midst of a social circle that isn’t empathetic or just doesn’t click. I had to move and explore until I found people I connected with
Me too, mostly. At least... in a lot of ways. It's weird having lived a whole life and done a bunch of crazy shit and then listening to people and realizing how fucking droll most of their lives are even at 30, how narrow are their experiences, even the ones that are "woke". I find it hard to relate. I even find myself condescending sometimes.
But nobody knows how to meet people, nobody has some magic playbook. You've got to press, and you've got to deal with rejections, because most people are too afraid.
At each and every point in my life, I was working with the information I had at my disposal, each information having its own "weight" in my mind. Every mistake I've made has brought some information in my mind that wouldn't have been brought otherwise. Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless.
The only way I could justify having regrets, is reminding yourself of some mistake that should not be repeated in the future. Alas, most regrets I see written by other people are things that will not repeat, e.g. spending your youth doing <X> instead of <Y>, not talking to your <Z> enough, not investing in <W> before its price went rockets... There's just no point.
> At each and every point in my life, I was working with the information I had at my disposal, each information having its own "weight" in my mind.
This. You play the hand you're dealt — and the hand you're dealt includes your "wiring" (brain anatomy, brain chemistry, etc.) and your "programming" (past experiences, etc.). And you try to learn what you can.
(Warning — tangent:) It all contributes to what I've come to think of as The Great Project [0] of helping to build a universe — where our Conway Game of Life moves (or our Boyd OODA Loop moves, if you prefer) are something like the following:
1. Aspire: Imagine some way in which the world could and should be different than (our mental model of) what it currently is.
2. Act — and while doing so: (A) remain open to new evidence and insights; and (B) for purely pragmatic reasons, seek the best for others as we do for ourselves (in part, because to a certain extent we all operate behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance).
3. Learn: Update the mental model of what the world is, and also the mental model of what the world "should" be.
Regret, like everything else, is an evolutionary corollary built out of destiny optimization that allows for counterfactual consideration of painful paths to avoid similar outcomes in the future. In the end, what physics decrees shall occur shall occur and the only thing we can do in those times of war is burn down the ships behind us and continue charging forward in this strange yet charming universe we find ourselves shackled within.
In the end, we must imagine Sisyphus—the final mirror—happy.
On the lighter end I certainly have situation where I'd like to know how it would have played out had I made different choices. It's minor things like I would what would have happened had I asked that girl out 15 years ago, but I was to stupid to notice that she liked me, or maybe I should have applied for that job six years earlier, because they clearly wanted to hire me back then already.
The thing is, every choice I've made, even "the wrong ones", have put me in a better position overall. Perhaps I could be richer, but I don't really care about that. Maybe I just view everything in a positive light and ignore all the good things that could have been, who knows.
I wish I didn't believe in regret but I feel it. I do my best to ignore it and face forward but I still often feel very strong regret for moments daily.
Since high school I wanted a spouse and kids (obviously I imagined a good relationship and good kids)
Now I'm in my late 50s and it's not going to happen. I was always hopeful today I'm going to meet someone. That hope has mostly disappeared.
I feel regret too, there are many experiences that, when I remember them, make my heart sink and make me think "I really fucking wish I didn't do it that way".
However, the perspective I've explained keeps me from dwelling on it for too long. What's done is done, I did the only thing I could do with the information that was available. There is no point in punishing myself (unless it's to remind myself of the lesson). That's what I meant by not "believing" in regret.
That perspective often helps me get out of the self-pitying mood.
Let's say you have two advisors constantly giving you advice about what action to take next, and all you ever do is choose between them. Over time you might learn that one of them gives better advice in some situations and the other gives better advice in others. In this weird hypothetical, regret is noticing that you followed the advice of the wrong advisor for the situation, and it turned out especially poorly.
What's going on in your brain is a lot more complicated than this, but I think it's still a meaningful concept?
In that particular example, regret would be justified, as it would be a remainder not to listen to the bad advisor.
However, if, at some point, both advisors decided to leave and never come back, and you started thinking about how one of them always gave you wrong advice, and regretting listening to him, then that regret is pointless.
I also don’t believe in regret. For me, I’ve always listened to my gut and I’ve always made the right choice. I believe in the power of listening to your conscience. Since I’m so attuned to my conscience, if I make a mistake I catch it and take the next chance to rectify it before life moves on. I never allowed myself to feel regret even if it meant pushing myself way out of my comfort zone or disregarding the advice of someone who has a lot of influence on me. It helps that I’m highly disagreeable (in terms of the Big 5 personality traits).
It seems you define regret as: if I went back in time I would do <Y> instead of <X> and of course this is a pointless exercise if you choose to define it this way.
Most people I think define regret more abstractly: back in time, <X> was a _mistake_, it shouldn't have happened, _I_ shouldn't have done it that way and consequences came from it either for myself or those I love.
It seems from your response that you're ok with admitting your mistakes which - by the above definition - sounds like you feel regret.
I don’t think that first statement is pointless, it just shows you have the ability to learn and to admit you’re not perfect. And regret just means you made a choice in the past, that you’d done differently being the person you are today, and you feel it would have made your life better had you choosen differently. But we all make mistakes, nobody’s perfect, I’d expect everyone to have some regrets.
A mistake is something that shouldn't have happened, regret is the same thing, with the addendum of wanting to change it or not wanting it to happen.
Time travel doesn't exist, ergo regret shouldn't exist. I think what op is saying is they don't ruminate on it and I agree, nobody should. unless you have an established pattern, then rumination is self invoked torture.
I get what you’re going for but I’ve found that attitude in other people distasteful. First it’s a normal emotion and simply refusing to experience an emotion probably isn’t healthy. It also means you are never really sorry even if you might say it. How can you truly be sorry for something without regretting having done it? It ends up translating to “I’m sorry for the outcome and that it hurt you but if I had to do it all over again I would still do it knowing that it hurt you” and that isn’t really an apology.
A regret is a mistake that you don’t want to make in the future only it’s projected into the past. “I regret having done that because if I went back to the past, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have done that”
You’re also inviting other people not to regret their choices even when those decisions negatively affect you.
I don't believe in the past. It's much the same if you think about it.
>Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless.
If you were to jump in a tardis and were to go to the event that you want to change. 100% of the time you will discover the entire thing was a story in your mind. Something you didn't understand at the time and if you were to 'fix' it. You would end up only harming yourself of today.
>The only way I could justify having regrets, is reminding yourself of some mistake that should not be repeated in the future. Alas, most regrets I see written by other people are things that will not repeat, e.g. spending your youth doing <X> instead of <Y>, not talking to your <Z> enough, not investing in <W> before its price went rockets... There's just no point.
Regrets of current day are legitimate. Perhaps it's substance abuse, social media. You know in your mind these things are not good. Nobody brags about these things. You know if you were to quit things would be better, but you have current day regrets of not doing so.
Furthermore, perhaps you're a superhuman with no faults. You can also have regrets having not done more. PErhaps you could have started that business or try to get that book published.
>> Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless.
As are ones about making an unlikely future come to be. When I find myself sidetracked by those thoughts I now say to myself "Get out of fantasy land where unicorns fart rainbows" and it seems to stop.
Hm... Regret is an emotion, not a logical destination. People don't rationally analyze a situation and deploy the appropriate, justifiable emotion; reacting emotionally is an involuntary step in processing things. You might be able to control your outward response, but that's not the same thing. Someone can experience regret for decisions that they wouldn't change in hindsight.
My father was a alcoholic, who had long stretches of staying sober before always falling of the wagon again.
After he had been on a particularly long bender, which finally caused my mother to divorce him, me and him had a verbal fight where I decided I would not have more to do with him until he would seek the help we knew he needed (and we had been offering him for so long).
I'll add that he was a moody drunk, never abusive and when not drunk he was the sweetest person.
Some months later he fell badly while drunk, and hit his head. The resulting internal bleeding caused damage to his prefrontal cortex, which resulted in personality changes and loss of inhibition.
Within the year he had a heart attack, alone in his apartment, having ravaged his body with the lifestyle he lived.
I wish I had been less stubborn, more understanding, and would have helped him get through his illness at the time. But I was only in my early 20s at the time, with much left to learn.
Don't feel so bad.
I've seen, from a distance, more than one friend tear their life apart trying to help an addict, to no avail.
I think that your chances of making any difference at all were slim.
Let the guilt go. Coming from a person in recovery who's lucky to have gotten out of that hole, just know there's not really anything you could have done if your father wasn't interested in seeking help. No amount of being there or showing understanding or talking sense to him matters. Good on you for not losing your 20s and beyond to that endless pit.
+1. I spent some time in recovery, and someone once shared that "Our help isn't for people who need it, it's for people who want it." That always stuck with me.
Small comfort, but thinking probabilistically, your choice was likely the best thing for him. It could have been the wakeup call he needed to truly change his life. Unfortunately, in this case it was not, but you can only make decisions with what you know at the time.
Think of it this way: your experience with your father is probably what kept you away from alcohol. It's a very common pattern.
BTW, I realize "falling off the wagon" means going on a bender, but shouldn't it really be the other way around? I mean, if you go on a bender, that's like getting on the wagon. I always picture this wagon with everyone drinking in the wagon. Because no one who drinking's drinking wants to walk. Just one of those things that's always bugged me.
Generally, this is the type of regret I finally came to terms with. The bottom line is that you did not know the future when you made the initial decision. After the fact you have the information that would have made a difference but we CAN'T, no mater how hard we try, foretell the future. What you are are actually regretting is a fantasy. Look at the world around you and you'll see many places where you wished you could have made a better decision but you can't be upset over them. Again you can't know what the future will be. None of us can so don't beat yourself over something you had no control over. Additionally, in your case, changing someone is not possible unless they want to change. You can only learn from the situation and hope to make a better choice in the future.
I understand completely and feel the same way about my own father.
My dad was also an episodic alcoholic. He'd go months without any issues, then disappear for three days on a binge. He'd drink such a massive amount of alcohol he'd have to go onto a IV drip.
My 16 year old self became so disgusted by him I refused to tell him I loved him and shunned him. We tried to give him the "tough love" we thought he needed so that he would "hit bottom" and then take some control back. It didn't work, and he ended up dying alone in a hotel room.
I now see that he needed more love and support instead of tough love and isolation. I wish I had been more patient, understanding, and supportive.
1. Doing a job as a model when I was very young (17) in which I was sexually abused.
2. Not going to university
After first, I got totally lost and torture myself. A lot. I didn't put priorities in order nor seek for help. I wasted a lot of time doing shitty jobs for having some money, having terrible relationships and doing sports heavily to keep me distracted until one day I decided it was enough and did two HNCs related with computer science (which is something I was always passionate about). I cannot complain about the jobs I've had nor the amount of money I earn right now but I'm 33 years old and I if I could change anything, would be definitely those two points. The first was not by choice, but I should have been more cautious.
PD: Holy fuck. I think is the first time I feel brave enough for mention this "out loud" to someone.
Sounds like a really shitty experience. Just a reminder of something which you know anyway: it's the perpetrator's fault, not yours. I guess I want to say something trite like "don't hang onto regret (or what feels like it) for someone else's actions" but I realise that's way simplistic. It seems that you were just living your life, working a job. That's normal, and (again overly trite, apologies) nothing to regret.
Best wishes!!
Edit: On re-reading what I wrote, it might seem that I'm saying you don't have the right to feel regret. Not my intention, sorry if it reads that way. It feels, though, that you shouldn't have to feel regret for living a normal life with normal decisions.
To anyone full of regret, I'd just like to give a quote by Marcus Aurelius (a Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher)
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly.
Life likely hasn't been perfect for almost anyone, but would you rather die right now (with likely unfinished desires, wishes and more regrets) or would you try to make the best use of what you have?
(It may be a bit difficult to fully live as per the quote even if you're already familiar with stoicism - it's quite hard for me too - but something that sometimes helps me is to literally visualize yourself dead as of now.
...I had no idea it was common here on HN, though I'm not surprised. It was just something that's helped me a fair bit and I hope(d) it could help others too.
Stoics had (yet another—IIRC the last one was around the 1950s-60s) popular revival a few years back and now they're everywhere (especially Aurelius) and there's definitely a bit of "well I'll have to stop wearing that band's shirt out and about now that Wal-Mart's selling fake-faded reproductions of their tour shirts and most of the people you see wearing one can't name more than three of their songs" to it.
I think it might be more that a lot of people in tech have poor work-life balances and bad interpersonal dynamics, and this causes high stress and receptivity to coping mechanisms.
I think I need to add that I don't mean to judge for this. I've been in similar places too. It can be a fine line with many shades of gray between "dissocation" and "coping". Some of it may be useful to somebody. Falling into it as a trap is very human.
Steve Jobs turned the ideas in that quote into a commencement speech after his cancer diagnosis. It concludes with:
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
It's a shame he never took the advice to heart. Jobs' last days were unnecessarily painful for both himself and his family, who desperately tried helping him only to be pushed away and insulted.
Jobs was good at echoing the wisdom of people smarter than him, but not so great at using those principles to fix his own life.
Yep, my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts basically died from alcoholism. Though, I am not sure whether his teachings would condone that or not for I have seen a few people argue either way.
Oh, wow! I didn't know that. I've listened to him for hours and hours.
The thing with alcohol (and most psychoactive drugs) is it literally changes the brain - and by that the person. The young person that says: "I would never let it get this far!" is basically right when it says that. But prolonged use of the drug changes that person. And that new person definitely will let it get this far, because it sees new justifications for doing so.
I know from experience unfortunately.
I don't think sober Alan Watts would approve of severe alcoholism as something 'no better or worse' than any other activity to spend your day. But I can clearly see a drinking Alan Watts run circles around anybody arguing the same thing.
I knew I would get your comment and almost left out the last line because of it. But, I wanted to keep the quote complete. It still works even if you leave out follow your heart.
Buying a thatched cottage in Ireland.
It's very pretty, and it checks all the boxes (bike ride from train station), etc. but Ireland's insanely strict protection rules and ridiculous insurance payouts have resulted in every insurer of thatched buildings leaving the country. Additionally, when I applied for permission to build a separate house on the land (it's a few acres) the heritage officer insisted we only build an extension, despite neighbours being permitted to build separate houses on their land, in order to force us to live in the house and "preserve" it. It's a very Irish approach. I extended it just in time to find the extension (and original cottage) completely uninsurable, so unmortgageable, so effectively worthless. A quarter million euro to have a beautiful unsellable unrentable house.
That creates a remarkable set of perverse incentives akin to what's seen in Australia, where restoring old houses properly is so expensive that they tend to be left to rot and/or mysteriously catch fire instead. Is the issue widely known?
A similar thing happens in the USA with houses declared "historic". It's well known among realtors and other groups, but not extensively known. Some states/localities have funds to somewhat help with maintenance, but they get depleted very fast, and you often have requirements like "cannot replace the switches with modern ones, must use push button switches" and similar things.
At $15 for a switch vs $1, those things start to add up.
In some poorer places it gets so bad the fire department will basically "wink wink" tell you how to burn your house down.
Other areas have a much nicer version which is "remain visually similar" - basically you can't change how the house looks from the street but you can do whatever you want/need inside.
This has been ironically known to happen on government property as well, where you might expect more desire to preserve historic property. Instead of fixing them, they may just be left to deteriorate until they can be razed and something more modern built on the site.
I don't think it's a good idea to do that without insurance, personally. Though paradoxically if it burned down it probably would be worth more. I'm more worried about personal liability if someone hurts themselves.
Reminds me of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, "and then one day you find ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun!".
Read through the thread. Look how many stories there are of people losing years and years to something that they now regret. The realization is that this is the norm, not the exception. We're all just fragile and fallible and trying to make our way through life as best we can, and we all end up messing up big somewhere along the way.
It's easy to look back on 10 wasted years and think you failed, you blew your one chance at life. But if you come to realize that looking back on 10 wasted years is actually a common human struggle, it can help you reframe your regret as just another one of the trials of being a limited, mortal human and not take it so personally as your own failing.
Yes, that's something I thought too when reading the parent comment. While I agree with the general sentiment of everyone losing ten years to something, I think it's hard to prove that, in a non-solipsistic way.
Everyone has a tendency to evaluate the past with today's knowledge and experience. That's a fallacy. You didn't so much "lose" 10 years, it just took 10 years to come to an understanding about a meaningful part of your life. And maybe you really needed all that time to arrive there.
In my book, regret means you've learned something about your past but you're still trying to change the past. Which you can't. What matters is how you're going to leverage your wisdom going forward in a meaningful way.
I take it to mean that everyone has a situation that they could have handled better, and it took them quite a few years to really fix the situation. Perhaps it was something that affected them mentally, and they finally overcame it, or perhaps it ended up being a physical or financial hardship.
Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone makes a few big mistakes.
The key is not to beat yourself up over it. Learn from the mistake and do better in the future.
It means that if you add up the regrets (for example, staying in a bad job or not doing X for Y years) then it will come up to about 10 years for everyone. Maybe your 10 years are still ahead of you, or perhaps some of them are behind you but you didn't realize that yet as you haven't seen the consequences yet.
Wow. That makes me feel so much better!! Seriously. 2011 to 2021 were those years for me. I've beat myself up over not making forward progress in life, if not regressing, for an entire decade. The idea that there's a saying about it is somehow comforting (assuming of course that the decade is now over). It's like when you stop and realize that "existential crisis" is a cliche phrase because so many others have experienced it as well, for centuries.
In 2017, I finally--courageously, in my opinion at the time--decided not to subject myself to my dad at Christmastime and bailed on a trip to see family for Christmas.
Only a few days after Christmas, my sister, who was 8 months pregnant, died very suddenly and with no warning.
I missed my last chance to see her alive, and I wound up spending a month staying with my parents anyway immediately after that, trying to help them manage.
With the information I had when I made the decision, I still think it was the right one, and I'm reasonably sure I would make it again with the same amount of information.
But I'll always wish I had made it differently anyway.
I am so sorry. I hope you can take a lot of comfort that even with hindsight you feel that your decision was the best one that you could have made. I imagine your sister would have agreed and would have understood.
We never know the storms we are about to sail into.
For some reason this resonated very strongly with me. Especially the reasoning around decisionmaking, where you wish you'd made the "wrong" choice because the outcome would have been better due to factors you could not have known beforehand.
It might sound weird to say it just this way, but I had to forgive myself for not being there. My presence wouldn't have made any difference to the outcome (it's not like if I had been there she might not have died), but had I made a different choice, I would have had those last few days and those last few memories with her.
I honestly haven't forgiven my dad for my not being there, though, even though my choice was my own. Perhaps if he had changed at all since then, it would be easier to feel differently.
I've recently heard forgiveness defined as "letting go of all hope for a better past," though, and I might be able to get to forgiving him by that path, for my own sake, not for his.
My mother was an irrational unreasonable prying crazy nightmare who was incredibly negative and hated anyone disagreeing with her about any trivial thing.
My biggest regret is that I allowed her to order me to go to the nearest university and continue to live with her. She had drained me of all confidence and was hostile to signs of me being an independent adult.
Getting away from her years earlier would have been much better for me.
I hope you've sought some professional help and are doing better. It is incredible how damaging bad parents can be. Being the brain so malleable, you'd grow your entire persona and life—your entire self—around a messed up childhood and then slowly solidify into position as you age.
Many of your thought patterns are tainted, and healing is a very long and painful process. But being (made) aware of the extent of the damage is the first and necessary step to a healthier self.
Focused too much on making a living in my teens and 20s instead of college and social life. Never pursued artistic interests seriously because I was just too tired from working and stressing out about bills.
Now I’m in my 30s with next to no social life and the realization that I’ve wasted away my time and whatever little talent I have.
There’s a “regret” folder sitting in my Google Drive with two half-finished books and at least half a dozen songs I was too chickenshit to finish and release out in the wild.
Always wonder how things might have turned out if I had more supportive parents (financially, emotionally) and if I had taken a few different relationship decisions.
I reckon it’s still not too late, but something tells me that it is…
When every someone says it's too late in life to do something, I like to remind them that Toussaint L'Overture (a former slave) [1] was almost 50 when he led one of the most successful slave rebellions, defeating all of the colonial powers at the time (France, Spain and UK) and laying the ground work for the first independent black state in Carribean.
I had been focused on work through my 20s and had always wanted to write. Shifted gears in my 30s and have developed myself as a writer. It wasn't without cost, of course.
If you want to give more time to developing yourself as a writer or musician or artist, there's time. You can shift gears, you just have to understand the tradeoffs because just like neglecting social life and artistic development led to those parts of yourself being underdeveloped, so will shifting gears in your thirties in regards to your career.
If you don't throw yourself full-bore into those new pursuits, you can still pick them up as hobbies, choose modest projects, and split the difference.
What surprised me in your story is that you have actually written those half finished books and songs. You've spend your time, you've tried it out and have an actual understanding of how this process works.
Because I've heard dozens of stories like yours, of people regretting not following their artistic pursuits. Practically all of those people didn't write anything at all and never tried to put the pen to paper.
For those people the path to artistry in an eternity. But you are already there. You've made the hardest steps and now you can only get better.
It's never too late, of course. I think there is a naïveté to one's art when younger that can be refreshing if it's music, perhaps less so if it's prose.
To be sure, the short stories and such I wrote in my early 20's are embarrassing to me now.
Pynchon was a young published writer when he wrote the story "Entropy" — I believe it was later embarrassing to him (and well it should be).
Since I was raised by a single mother (working as a secretary) I took financial responsibility very seriously — such that, while I had an artistic bent, I did not waste my money paying for college to pursue a degree as impractical as art. I don't think though that, like you, that I have had many second thoughts about the path I took. I know I would have done the same thing given another chance.
On the other hand I have since raised three kids and encouraged all of them in creative expression. I made it clear as they grew up that college was going to be a free ride for them — they should pursue whatever degree that speaks to them. (My first daughter majored in Fine Art — is busy getting her tattoo license).
I kind of feel like I got a second chance through them. Or a chance to see what-could-have-been. They're fortunate. I and perhaps you were not.
My regret is watching so much crap on cable TV before starting a family (cut the cord when the first was born, never looked back). Got a lot of free time back to pursue more artistic interests. :-)
Nope. It is never too late.
As long as you are alive, you can change things.
It certainly won't be easy. But it is doable. The only thing that is stopping you, is your own mind. And I believe in you. You can do it!
Also I wish you a nice day, hopefully.
If I had to pick one thing out of all the things in the universe that is never too late to start a career in, I would pick writing.
When Günter Grass (famous German author) was asked for advice to young writers he said something like: "Don't try to become a writer just because you want to be one. And if you absolutely must do it, don't study languages. Pick a career that forces you into contact with lots of people. A waiter in a restaurant or something. If young people start to write without knowing the world, they risk writing about their own belly button too soon." (Writing about your belly button being an expression for writing about your own selfish viewpoints and insecurities)
I'm in my mid thirties and published my first short stories last year. I'm very pleased with the result and I'm glad I didn't publish my earlier stuff. I was terribly opinionated while trying to sound enlightened and only out to prove something to myself and the world. Now I have the maturity to be more expressive and it shows in the feedback I get. (Always express, never impress they say.)
Now I'm putting off my first novel to learn about computers, because I feel like having a good job is a more pressing issue right now than artistic expression.
And I'm absolutely positive that it won't be too late for my novel when I'm 40.
Writing is one of those pursuits/passions that often doesn't really get going until later in life. Author Hilary Mantel, who just passed away at age 70, didn't publish her first novel until her mid 30s. Science Fiction author Gene Wolfe was a plant engineer (helping to design the machine used to make Pringles, incidentally) and later the editor of a technical magazine. He wrote short stories and novellas on the side starting in his 30s but wasn't able to start writing full time until his late 40s or 50s.
>Focused too much on making a living in my teens and 20s instead of college and social life. Never pursued artistic interests seriously because I was just too tired from working and stressing out about bills.
Sounds like you are me. I worked tons, paid off my house. Got my retirement fund way up. Lots went well; but obviously came at a cost of other things.
>There’s a “regret” folder sitting in my Google Drive with two half-finished books and at least half a dozen songs I was too chickenshit to finish and release out in the wild.
Andy Weir was in his 40s when he finished his 3rd book and managed to get it published. Now he's a contemporary scifi leader.
Personally managed to finish writing 3 books but I'm too chickenshit to actually try to get them published. I'm a tech, not a writer and I'm not expecting they are any good.
>I reckon it’s still not too late, but something tells me that it is…
Nope, not at all too late. You have decades to get back to those.
I think I have similar feelings. While studying and in my early 20s I spent a lot of time trying to build a side business (a la Four Hour Work Week) so I could have freedom to spend my life how I wanted instead of working all the time.
My parents were not very well off and I had to work a couple of jobs to put myself through higher education, so I think this is where that came from. The ironic thing was that in that part of my life I had basically no responsibility so could have actually lived my life and don't whatever I wanted, I just didn't have much money.
Now I'm in my 30s, have a family, and have a ton of responsibilities. I'm doing somewhat well financially (money in > money out), but now have no free time to actually do anything, and not enough savings to take an extended break from working.
> Focused too much on making a living in my teens and 20s instead of college and social life
I did this too, to avoid addressing being gay. At times in my life I've regretted working so much, but in my late 50's I developed some health problems because of a goofed-up immune system (CVID). Now, I'm glad I was able to retire at 45 because I was a workaholic in my younger days. I still enjoy my life, but if I had to work full time, it would be pretty miserable and I'd probably have to go on disability.
One thing I try to keep in mind about regrets: when looking back, people always assume that if they had made a different decision, the outcome would have been better. But you don't actually know that: things could have turned out worse.
I spent my teens and 20's working, too. Turned down a different path when I was 33. Now I'm 39, and just recently ended up going back to a productive career -- but those years in between were absolutely the best of my life and I couldn't be more glad that I took them for myself.
Would some things have gone better if I'd done that with my 20's instead of my 30's? Undoubtedly. At the same time, other things made it much easier in my 30's -- for an obvious example, having money already saved up freed me from having to work some menial job to support myself during those years.
> Focused too much on making a living in my teens and 20s
Worst mistake of my fucking life. Did me no good anyway, as all of peers who had a head on them and took more traditional paths ended up reaching where I was or better within a few years.
It's probably the average situation for most people.
In their 30s, most average people are busy with kids and work and have little time to socialize.
But eventually they will reunite with their lifelong friends and make videos like these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g3OT7w1u5s (I have no affiliation with those people)
Not leaving a destructive relationship sooner. Twice.
The second one was the worst. I've since observed that behaviour in other couples, mostly with the men, but almost as frequently with the women that make the partner's feeling of self-worth completely revolve around them.
It's toxic, left me with severe depression that is still an issue today. There is a certain type of internal self-talk that becomes a self-reinforcing mania and starts with the simplest triggers and ends up with a feeling of loathing that can happen any time. It's dangerous and can lead to thoughts of suicide.
This was in my early 30s, and I'm now in my late 50s and I can't believe I still have these things to deal with.
Best advice I can think of is a quote from William Burroughs:
"If, after being in the presence of a certain person, you feel like you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person."
I've been there; in the end, I had to take a job in another country --literally emigrate-- to properly make the break that my head was screaming for, but was so very difficult to make happen at the time within the confines of the relationship.
I'm lucky that I don't have the long-term damage that you have, but it took years to heal, I think - and even now, there are some traits in my behaviour that are far from ideal and which I think trace back to that relationship. (For example, I've developed a disproportionately strong response to any behaviour from others that starts to even slightly near to 'controlling'. This obviously isn't ideal when mostly people aren't like that.) I think of this as emotional scar-tissue; I need to work out how to start breaking it down.
I had to get out of an abusive relationship to see it was abusive, which I think is true for a lot - maybe even the vast majority - of people. She was emotionally abusive/manipulative, and that would occasionally branch into physicality. Never anything as overt as hitting/slapping, but certainly the occasional grab or shove.
I also had friends bring up the emotional part (nobody ever saw anything physical) but your mind gets pretty twisted when you're in a relationship like that. It's really hard to see it through an objective lens until you're already on your way out, or even far removed.
I don't know your specific circumstances but I'm confident you will continue to get better.
Trust your gut feeling. Also ask yourself would you otherwise be friends with this person? Do they truly value you for you? Do you feel emotionally safe with them? Do your friends like the person. If you have a good relationship with your family otherwise, do they like your partner? If things seem off, they probably are. Also find a therapist and discuss things with them. They will be able to tell you if things are healthy or not.
The classic symptoms are alienating you from your friends and family. Negging or putting you down... even subtle jabs. They make arguments personal as an attack on your character and identity or suggest you are attacking their character. Deep down it is all about control and fear. Usually this person will have more narcissistic traits, see everything as a reflection of them and their needs. You are just a tool to meet their needs rather than an individual human.
For folks who have been in traumatic relationships and need help healing I would recommend therapy with a trauma therapist (something like EMDR).
While at a house party during summer break while in college, my summer-time girlfriend and a girl I had dated in high school started making out and I was so surprised about it that I missed an opportunity for a threesome. I later talked about it with them and they admitted that they were thinking about it and would have done it if I had suggested it. Can't tell you how many times I've regretted not acting that night.
I wish I had asked my dad more things and recorded/wrote them down.
My old man is in for stage 4 cancer and it gets harder to ask him things. Every little tidbit of info he gave me over the years I cherish greatly, but I often times (read: nearly always) forget the context or nuance of the statement, meaning that, of the thousands of moments I’ve had with him, only a select few are ones that provide me any insight into who he is/was and/or advice for my life. The rest are just passing thoughts that make me think “damn my dad was cool”, which is good in its own regard, but certainly not the same.
My dad started writing me letters after major life events and birthdays, on new years, etc... I save them all.
They boil down to advice like being grateful for what you have, looking back and being proud at what you’ve accomplished, valuing the people in your life especially those that take time to help you, and realizing how lucky you are and at the same time encouraging working to put yourself in positions where you make your own luck.
They seem to come at the right time, after I have a phone conversation when I tell him I’ve failed at something or am frustrated with someone.
It’s less about him and more about me but it helps me remember the kind of man he was, one of the greats.
Forget nuance, what I would have given for one meaningful moment from my largely aloof old man. You are lucky to have that relationship in ways you'll never know.
My dad died earlier this year from prostate cancer. I wish deeply that I had spent more time with him, listened more closely to him. I lay awake every night thinking about lost opportunities I had during my life, moments when I chose to do anything other than just hang out with him.
You have a hard road ahead, I hope you have a support network filled with people who love you. I am a loner with no support network outside of my family and it has been fucking hard.
I'm sorry to hear and I wish you and your dad the best. Hope you find peace and those moments in your head prove to be a forever lasting memory of a wonderful man.
I don't know if it's any consolation, and I'm sure you've considered this, but it's impossible to remember and perfectly grasp the nuance of every moment spent with anyone. There's an inevitable loss, not just of the physical person, but the depth of their impact in your life. This is part of the nostalgia and sadness and joy of remembering loved ones.
Im seriously considering asking my father to sit down with me and record all his stories I loved to hear growing up. I am not sure why, but I feel "uncomfortable" in some ways asking it. I know I will regret it one day when I am older and his gone, but I struggle to find the courage to ask for some reason.
Not spending more time being young. I never really got the chance. Due to life circumstances I had to begin working basically as young as you can work in America. I've never had a free summer, never rushed a frat, never went to dances, etc. At the time it didn't bother me but now I'm older I've seen the effects. I similarly did nothing but school and work to pay bills in college. This has had such a profound effect on my self esteem the scale I have to measure it in is logarithmic. As a result in many ways I'm maladjusted to "normal" life. The song "Time" by Pink Floyd really resonates with me.
While I've moved on from losing the best years of my life (you're only young and innocent once) I overcompensated for a long time, and still sometimes to this day, by trying to do everything people invite me to do. Paradoxically this made my situation worse because more...stable people have a lot of people-oriented things they like to do and I approach all these things expecting to not keeping to do them. For example, going to the bar or clubs or whatever. These however lead to more regrets, like drinking too much when I was young and not taking better care of my health (thankfully nothing serious happened).
Now, the advantage of getting older is I can look back on this wide body of experience and use it to make calls on things. I know what I like to do. I know that I am not a very social person. Instead of trying to be a caricature of what I imagine a normal person is like I just work with what I have. It's been a long multi-decade process to get here but I am better.
I also like Pink Floyd's Time. It also really reasonates with me.
In the song, the young folks waste/enjoy their time when they are young. You spent your time working. In the song they spent their time laying in the sun and staying home to watch the rain. Actually it seems like a pleasant youth, but then they later they regret it. I guess they had hustle culture in the UK in the 70s too.
You know, with that background I bet everyone holds you up as an ideal of someone who has their shit together, and didn't waste huge parts of their life.
I guess you could say I have my shit together. It's strange how true grass-is-always greener is. People who did a lot of "fun" stuff growing up wish they were more serious. I wish I had time to be less serious. Life is funny in that way, isn't it?
I let a divorce ruin me mentally during a pivotal year of my company. Had a rough valuation of ~100MM and blew my top 3 market position because I let my ex convince me that it was all my fault that our relationship failed. In reality she was just struggling with being gay. I stopped paying attention at work for about 18 months in an attempt to “save my family” but I just ended up losing everything. Oh well.
Been there, employee #12 in 2016 at startup that created one of top ten cryptocurrencies. Was not crypto nut, I worked in research, friend gave me a gig. Disposed all crypto assets a few months before 2017 peak, bcos wanted simple divorce. Friends were telling me to convert everything to coins and run into Thailand LOL.
On the plus side, there are a lot of crypto bros here in Thailand and you could probably still find a blockchain to do research for if that's still your thing.
They keep telling me to buy Bitcoin, I keep buying beers instead...
Thanks for sharing because it reminds me of a situation I went through which was similar in some ways. I had a back-to-back of really bad managers. Ever met people who are offended and basically angry that you are smarter than they are or ever will be?
I made good money in a terrible spot for 2 years. Dropped to 145 pounds or so at 5’7” (now 165 abd healthy). Broken emotionally and in spirit. The worst part? Those closest to me kept insisting I was being off base and Jeff wasn’t really that bad. Oh and don’t quit until you have the next job lined up, which even with 2 applications a week was useless at the time.
All of them were just afraid of instability or that I wouldn’t find work. Maybe at the time they were right. I’m also glad to share the following which I probably couldn’t have done without that awful experience…
In 2022 I discovered my role is getting massive raises, promotions, and work-life balance because of the stress that comes with deadline driven sales processes. Within 5 months I saw a dream job on paper be a bush-league cult pressure cooker. Also they were underpaying market rate by $10-15,000 in salary.
I spoke up about an issue and got Terminated for non job performance reasons. After 5 months there I just updated my resume and leave their name off because Momma told me if you don’t have anything nice to say…and I’m the job hunt in Fall 2022 it doesn’t matter. People are asking “when can you start?” more seriously than “why are you looking now?” because it’s obvious - the market is hot and six-figure gigs are falling out of the sky with signing bonuses for the first time ever.
So, as unsettling and not-their-comfort-level this time has been to them, for me it has been therapeutic and inspiring. I’m a finalist in 3 different firms, 2 are promotions, all pay $15,000 - $20,000 more in base salary so I can keep up with inflation, and hybrid office presence versus butt in chair for a Boomer’s sense of control.
Yea it’s a little over a month but the future is blindingly bright after all that suffering along the way. Yes I love the people who are bothered by this different approach, but it’s my goddamn life and I listened to them last time and it was shit so they can either get with reality or shut up and manage their own lives and leave mine alone.
I've consciously moved on from ruminating on the past and replaying alternate timelines in my mind, to thinking about what I actually can change: the present, and the future.
Life is a blind let's play. It's more fun to watch exactly because you don't know what's going to happen. Having the ability to play it again would destroy consequence, and thus meaning, to one's actions.
Spending extraordinary amounts of time thinking about the past got me literally nowhere. When I realized this, practically every problem in my life started unwinding and I found friends, love, passion, work, and peace.
Once I came to the conclusion that past actions only have a limited affect on the immediate present - like real genuine hooks versus memories of stuff - then life is a series of situational decisions. Trying to get them all “right” is a fool’s errand leading to heartache. On the flip side, it gives lots of chances to try and live out personal principles and perspectives on how to operate in this life, and takes away the guilt of existing with consciousness a little, and for me, makes each day a bit more fun.
It’s almost like being able to walk through walls in Doom (clipping life) - very powerful and a lot of people look on and wonder “how do you do that?” because I am a genuinely happy guy.
Agree. I often tell myself, and others, when bad things happen: Eventually, something good will happen, and you had to go through the bad things to get there.
That said, it’s hard not to regret getting a real band together while my voice was still there.
I would recommend reading 30 lessons for living : tried and true advice from the wisest Americans by Karl Pillemer:
> After a chance encounter with an extraordinary ninety-year-old woman, renowned gerontologist Karl Pillemer began to wonder what older people know about life that the rest of us don't.
> His quest led him to interview more than one thousand Americans over the age of sixty-five to seek their counsel on all the big issues- children, marriage, money, career, aging. Their moving stories and uncompromisingly honest answers often surprised him. And he found that he consistently heard advice that pointed to these thirty lessons for living. Here he weaves their personal recollections of difficulties overcome and lives well lived into a timeless book filled with the hard-won advice these older Americans wish someone had given them when they were young.
I don't know. I used to think that the wisdom of old people was something to aspire to. I come from a place in the world where family ties are very important and we're all very close together, and for the past decade I've been having a lot of trouble with my family's influence on me.
Their insistent advice comes from a good place but belongs to a world that doesn't exist anymore or a world that I don't care for; their advice throughout my life made me less assertive and more submissive in the face of adversity, it ended up having me stay put and not take any chances in life, it ended up destroying a happy 10+ year relationship and just yesterday they started giving me advice again on how I should find a "stupid fat woman" (yes, these are the words) so she can "bare children and not give you headaches".
So, in my 3rd decade on this planet, I have come to fear the advice of old, and to cringe whenever I get these important life lessons. It took a very big toll on me, to shy away from them, and to actually start being myself, and my quality of life improved dramatically, but even now they still push and prod and try to 'advise' me.
I hope I won't end up on my death bed, regretting not following their advice, but for now, I'd rather not regret the present.
I come from the Bible belt, and was religious as a teenager before life circumstances led me to quickly and dramatically turn away from faith. When that curtain was pulled, suddenly many of the adults in my life seemed misguided at best, and downright evil at worst.
But college gave me a different view on this. I went to a small university, where some professors made a real effort to mentor students - not only to make them better academics, but better people too. These professors were people I really looked up to.
I think they empathized more with students, recognizing that while they did have advice to give, context matters - some may be relevant nowadays, some may not. They also were quite analytical; they'd only truly believe some advice they gave if they'd spent lots of time critiquing, testing, and thinking about it.
I guess I mention all this to say: respect for someone's advice must be earned. It sounds like your family did not earn this, so IMO you have the right idea.
* The 50/50 Fallacy: this notion is self-explanatory. No marriage is a 50-50 balance of energy. Contribution levels will vary across situations and over time. If you expect a 50/50 situation, you’re likely really expecting something more along the lines of an 80/20 exchange in your favor, as in you wish your spouse would do 80% of the lifting. Check yourself, and realize there should be zero competition involved in relationship contribution.
* No one— not a single person out of a thousand— said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want.
* I uncovered one underlying principle behind their emphasis on interpersonal skills: maintaining a healthy humility.
* Isolated work is an illusion to be avoided. Your job can be autonomous and flexible AND be connected to many people and environments.
* What if out of the enormous muddle of child-rearing advice there was a “magic bullet”? What if there was one course of action you could take that would create loving relationships with your children, serve as an early warning system for problems they are having, and lead to a lifelong bond with them? According to the experts, there is: spend more time with your children. And if necessary, sacrifice to do it.
* This extra time spent with children should be interactive. Time spent with children is not simply being in the same room with them or just keeping an eye on them. You want to be engaged in their experience as often as reasonably possible.
* No one has perfect children. They all admit it: their kids had at least some difficulty, a flaw, a period of unhappiness, a major wrong turn. The reassuring thing is that most of their kids turned out pretty well nevertheless. The message is clear: abandon all thoughts of raising the “perfect child” or being the perfect parent, and do it as early as possible.
* By making healthy lifestyle decisions as early as possible, you can to some degree control whether you spend the last decades of your life in healthy productivity and contentment or in a downward spiral of physical misery.
* ALWAYS reach out. You do not want to become isolated.
* Be honest above all. If you’re honest with all the people around you, no matter what happens, you can look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and say, “I haven’t done anything wrong.” In other words, you’ve made the right decision if you’re honest.
* One particular virtue was mentioned over and over again – honesty. Just be respectfully honest. If you present the facts as necessary – no more, no less – then you never have to be nervous. The facts are what they are. Withholding or distorting relevant facts when interacting with others generates anxiety and discomfort.
* Don’t worry so much. There is not enough time in our lives to trade off the gold of our existence for the dust of what-ifs or what-if-nots.
* Once people reach a certain age (70s and beyond), it’s almost a certainty that they have experienced significant loss and significant joy. The elders have become experts in walking a balance between accepting loss and maintaining an awareness of life’s pleasures. The elders overwhelmingly believe that each of us can choose to be happier and that we can do so in the face of the painful events that inevitably accompany the process of living.
* They see a distinct difference between worry and conscious, rational planning that greatly reduces worry.
Did your advice come from one person, a dozen, or a thousand? Because the book is the distillation of a thousand: the common threads from all sorts of people from all walks of life.
Reading the book costs nothing except some time (and no money if you use a library like I did).
I'm sure it's great for normies but my kids are mentally disabled and being their dad is grief and heartache without end. I have no close family to share any of it with - the little family I grew up with are all dead and I am looking forward to my own death.
I hope that one day genetic research will advance to a point where 23andme et al can help future young couples avoid these kind of outcomes.
I had a great job. Great pay, stock grants that are still going up, good work/life balance, and co-workers who were friends, co-workers who wanted me on their teams. I'd spearheaded an initiative which ultimately failed but had earned me a good reputation.
I went on a medication with a side effect of anger. I was told that at the beginning, I was told that there were other drugs I could use instead. I dismissed the concern, I'd be fine.
I got cocky. I got complacent. I convinced myself that the company needed me and would never dare replace me. I started to get a really bad attitude - openly sneered at projects that I didn't think could succeeded. I was probably right but I didn't help anyone by my griping.
I lost the job. Technically I was 'laid off' but it was that or simply get fired. I lost friends with my unpleasant attitude. I made statements that made me cringe with embarrassment now.
I'm doing fine currently, and am on a new medication. I'm making less though that I would have at my old job, and if I'd stayed there I'd be a lot less worried about my future. They held on to experienced engineers and for some people it was their last job before retiring.
I could blame the medicine entirely, but the truth is I'm still an arrogant asshole and I still fall into the trap of believing I'm irreplaceable and can get away with whatever I want.
I wish I'd changed medications. I wish that I'd listen to people who tried to help, who told me that there were teams that didn't want to work with me. I'd be in a lot better place.
My SO has a related issue. They were taking depression medication specifically for the side effects. As in, they had a disease and the side effects of the drug were the point of taking it.
Thing was, the actual effect made my SO go nutters for about a year. Because, again, my SO wasn't supposed to take the drug for the effects, but for the side effects.
When my SO, drug free and many years later, finally told this to a therapist, the therapist was aghast that my SO wasn't given therapy to help manage the actual effects too.
It seems so blindingly obvious that if you take drugs that effect your mind that you should also get therapy to monitor that effect. But it wasn't to us for some insane reason.
So, dear HN reader, take these stories to heart:
If you take mind altering drugs, get a therapist for the entire time that you are on that drug.
This could be me - maybe except the successful stock grants :)
Some of things I said and did when I was writing PHP shitcode at 24 make me want to crawl inside my couch. I'd like to think I've mellowed out a lot, but I think everyone is susceptible to falling into this trap, especially when they're highly compensated and well respected.
It's not just you. Most, if not all, of what humanity knows is wrong. It's easy to trick ourselves into thinking our constructs reflect reality: we sit at the pinnacle of human understandanding looking forward and our constructs are correct enough that things mostly work.
I've recently taken to adopting an "antiquity mindset." Instead of imagining a piece of information as the pinnacle of knowledge in our current context, I remind myself that in 10 (or 100, or 1000) years, folks are going to look back at these ideas with a red pen marking everything we were mistaken about.
Stay humble in what you "know" - most of what humanity will discover is in the future.
My first boss was your classic unix-beard, I hear his echo in some of the things I say. Nobody liked him either, but it's easier to get away with it at a 5 engineer company where you're the only one who dares touch the 10 year old C codebase.
I would redo all of my time in high school. Personal and academic. Not getting the grades I needed in math then stopped me from being able to pursue a CS degree in post-secondary. And that meant spinning my wheels running uphill in my career for a long time trying to get employers to consider me. It still affects me, 20+ years into my career.
And I made 'choices' (are adolescents truly making choices?) in my personal relationships and actions at the time that I think were selfish and at times unethical that I wish I could go back and change.
Amazing that we let these years be such a critical fulcrum for individual's lives even though most adolescents are not at all ready to make the important decisions and sacrifices.
Last week, actually. Was a bit careless and inebriated while working on a demo and suddenly I realized I had luksFormatted the luks partition holding the only copy of keys for cryptocurrency worth ~$200k. That was a sizable fraction if my supposed net worth. Either I'm still in denial or I've risen above obsessive materialism as it doesn't affect me too much so far, though. Its just money.
Unplugged the drive and haven't touched it since but I'm not holding my hopes up.
Same here, lost the keys to a sizeable wallet that was god knows how big at one point, I stopped checking a while ago but it was a good exercise in letting go and learning to value other things. I can't complain, most of my regrets are related to how I spent or wasted money, there's worse things and life went on to turn out great regardless of my net worth.
It bothers my ex much more than it does me. She has contacted me on at least five separate occasions asking me if I had reconsidered my decision to not search for the old desktop the wallet resided on.
cryptsetup luksFormat on sdx3 with default parameters over an existing partition with (I think) the same parameters but a different passphrase. Realized my mistake shortly after typing "YES" and I don't think further writes happened since.
Like mentioned in other comment, I'd def shell out a portion of the money to recover the rest but not sure where to start. Given the amount I'm hesitant to do any further operations myself with the drive (Samsung evo SSD) plugged in.
I'm not in a position to advise, but I'd try a few recovery firms- given the context, they should be able to provide realistic estimates on what's possible. Even if it's 10% of whatever is inside if you are successful.
I regret not having more emotional maturity at an earlier age.
What a lot of people don't know about ADHD is that with it comes a likelihood of a delay in emotional maturity that leads to behavior that's not age appropriate. When looking back at my life, I can identify several times where I was behaving in a way that might have been expected of a child a few years younger than I was but wasn't appropriate for my actual age at the time. This effectively meant losing out on social opportunities, friendships, and romantic relationships. Most of my problems in life stem from this issue.
A mild example of said behavior is a time where I threw a fit in front of my girlfriend because my parents asked me to take out the garbage for them. I was living with my parents at the time and really didn't have many chores, so asking me to take out the garbage wasn't a big ask. But at the time I felt like they shouldn't have been wasting my time with that while I had my girlfriend over. Kids sometimes act out, yes, but I was 18 years old. That's even idiotic behavior for a 16 or 17 year old.
More extreme examples are the times I made inappropriate jokes or spoke my mind out loud without considering why other people wouldn't appreciate hearing them. I was also very judgmental when I was younger and for some reason thought the world ought to hear how judgmental I was, and I ended up losing some friends and romantic interests over that attitude.
It's possible there was nothing I could have done about it, so I struggle to actually regret it. What might have helped me was having an older brother or adult who could identify my behavior pattern, rather than dismiss it, and get me knock it off.
Make sure you're not confusing ADHD with having bipolar type II. The hypomanic periods (a less intense form of mania) seem like ADHD, but the root cause and treatment is different. I've been misdiagnosed for a couple decades and earlier this year finally got the proper meds. The change has been so revelatory, I mention this any time I see someone talking about how much ADHD has affected their lives on the off chance it helps someone. Check it out.
Trying to get a PhD. I wasn’t a good student and I didn’t choose a good advisor. I spent the better pet of a decade trying to finish and failed. I ended up unemployed and divorced in large part because of that decision, and while my life is OK now, I can’t help but regret that little decision that lead to so much personal pain and suffering.
Staying at my previous job too long. 9 years. At 5 years it started to turn toxic. I always hoped it would get better but it didn’t. I should have left sooner but I wanted to finish the project I was on because I wanted to leave behind something to feel proud of.
In the end the company screwed my over. But I have a better job now so it worked out ok.
Similar story here, though fortunately "only" 6 years. I was at a startup, and though I'd come to disagree with the direction of the company, I'd put so much work in that I was always operating on a sunk-cost type hope that success was just around the corner.
Of course, it wasn't. I've been out over a year now and getting into a position to be able to walk away financially and then doing it was one of the best decisions.
I'm hoping the lessons I've learned balance out the psychological damage I took pushing through burnout for three years.
I started playing drums when I was 8 years old. A few months later, the movie "That Thing You Do" came out. It's about a drummer who joins a band and becomes a famous rock star. It had such a HUGE impact on me, from that moment until I was about 24 years old I KNEW my life's purpose. I was going to be a rock star. Nothing else was possible, and nothing else mattered.
This lead me down a path I now regret. All my friends were other musicians. All we wanted to do was smoke weed, play music, and party. Sure, I had lots of fun along the way, but once I got old enough to actually experience the life of a touring musician I had to accept that it wasn't for me. I wasn't happy with the life style. Turns out, I'm actually happier working hard and living a "normal" life.
Luckily, I was able to go to college and get a pretty good job, but I feel like I will never meet my true potential. I spent so many years taking the easy path that I now struggle with mediocrity. All because my 8-year-old brain made a decision that it had no business making.
If I could go back in time, I'd focus on going to college straight out of high school and developing myself as much as possible.
Perhaps a more simple regret, but not buying bitcoin when it was at ~8USD. In hindsight it would've been the easiest way to not have to think about money anymore for the rest of my life.
There's always something called as an Index fund. Which more or less tracks the top companies of a country. Unless you expect your country itself to go down, its generally a good lottery ticket to buy.
I'd say just throw in some pocket change in places where you can afford to lose. You never know as the downside is nearly 0, the upside is in millions.
This is my personal coping mechanism. If I made $10k in BC I would have sold it all and felt very lucky.
I did find a fractional BC on a thumbnail drive in an EOL software wallet for which I had long ago forgotten the password. So that could have happened too.
Gotta be this. Spent hours and hours on Folding when Bitcoin was just getting started, if I’d spent a single day mining I’d be retired now. Doubt I’ll see an opportunity like that again in my lifetime.
I feel like investment regret is a trap as there are so many winning investments we overlook as they are far exceeded in quantity by possible bad investments. Hindsight creates the illusion of perfect information. At least this is what I tell myself to sleep better at night.
If that is your biggest regret, don't you reckon that you have a very good life so far? (I'm assuming that you live a comfortable lifestyle right now.)
I ordered an ASIC miner back when they were first coming up. My shipment got held up by customs and they asked me to pay a hefty import fee. I didn’t have the extra cash at that time so I just let it go and forgot about it a few months later.
If I had plugged that machine in, I would have probably retired by now. A few months of mining back then was enough to have life changing amount of BTC today.
I feel this quote badly aged. Nowadays, the choice isn't really binary anymore, there's so much between marrying or not. I never married but had two long, solid relationships so far. Which I'm quite happy with.
I do note that you didn't actually say what your choice was, and whether you regret it.
Marriage was considered a core social obligation until very recently. In modern times, I take this quote to mean something closer to "choose to conform to what society expects or choose not to; you will have some regrets either way."
That historical detail is actually somewhat irrelevant to the quote. This is from "Either/Or" and Kierkegaard was making a point about the nature of decision-making and regret, not about marriage. The fuller quote:
"If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or if you do not marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will also regret it; whether you laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a girl, you will regret it; if you do not believe her, you will also regret it; if you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both. [...] This, gentlemen, is the sum of all practical wisdom."
And later:
"Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the possible, that eye which everywhere, ever young, ever burning, sees possibility. Pleasure disappoints, not possibility."
I regret hearing the lies spoken during sex education when I was in fifth grade in 1987. The public school I was forced to attend brought in a sociologist to do the damage. She told us that we had to release our libido energy regularly - either by having sexual relations with another person or by masturbation, and that this was okay and healthy. Self control and abstinence were presented as being unrealistic.
This provided me with moral license from an expert (and indirectly from my parents, who had to sign the permission form to attend the lecture). One thing led to another, and it undoubtedly resulted in addiction; the endorphins and oxytocin produced by the human body and released during orgasm are worse than heroin. Bad habits form easily, and it's scary when you can't stop doing something that you believed would be just an experiment at age ten. The shame / guilt was hell.
If I could change anything anything about my past it would be to erase the immersion into that addiction at such an early, formative age. All other attachments of spirit have been easy to deal with - this one has not.
I don't know if that helps ... but I didn't that without the sociologist and only with the help of the Internet.
I took me sometimes, I am much better on that. But it takes a shitload of work and just removing the blaming you put on yourself everytime your relaspe.
It's weird to me that in my home country, Italy, "sex addition" is not seen as a problem at all, and I suspect this would be true for many other countries with similar cultural background (e.g. Mediterranean/Western cultures).
The first time I saw a movie where the protagonist was a "sex addict" and was going to group therapy, akin to AA, I couldn't believe it. At that point I was abroad, working for a US company. I eventually moved to the US a few years later.
At some point I realized that my bias towards this came from my cultural background, and it was actually hard to explain it to co-workers, or other Americans in general.
I have the same problem. In the sex education course I was given we were taught about abstinence and such, and there wasn't anything controversial as I recall. However I asked the counselor giving the lecture if it were possible to get an STD by masturbating. He said "no." For my adolescent brain, that was all the validation I needed to become addicted to this day.
Many factors have conspired to keep things this way:
- The only prerequisite to becoming addicted is having a body that is intact.
- There is practically nothing to prevent a curious teenager from masturbating at a young age, and the current literature regards this as normal, despite the fact that it can lead to addiction if it's not addressed. But teenagers are not about to let something that embarrassing be addressed by their family, especially for one as reticent as I was.
- Because the addiction is behavioral there is no physical substance to seek out and no seedy culture to involve oneself in, so there's no exposure that could lead to outside forces wanting to change you. You can obtain a limitless amount of porn anywhere for free and nobody would ever know.
- The physical consequences of using are mostly fatigue the next day, which can be mistaken as the result of anything. Mentioning sexual topics is taboo in comparison to admitting you are alcoholic, so nobody is going to guess correctly and intervene based on your appearance. It's an invisible addiction.
- When it's to the point that people online question if addiction to masturbation is even a thing, or if it's a puritanical argument in opposition to sexual freedom, it greatly diminishes the stances of people who actually have the condition and can't control themselves. Many are trying to decrease the shame around sexual things while the people that can't help themselves are left behind adding those movements to an ever-growing list of rationalizations.
- Being addicted to masturbating and/or porn is not as severe as being addicted to hard drugs or even alcohol. It gives you a sense that this is the "right" addiction to have if you're going to have an addiction at all, and makes quitting all but hopeless once it's taken hold.
- Admitting to this publicly opens yourself up to ridicule with the way the culture is set up. It's unlikely many would react positively to jokes about heroin users or binging alcoholics. Sexual humor on the other hand is practically embedded into every sitcom and countless memes and dick jokes. Addiction to masturbation is never going to be taken as seriously or at as large a scale as most other addictions.
The only good part is that the addiction is manageable for the most part and my lack of sociality has prevented me from going as far as casual sex. But I'm starting to have erectile dysfunction and a loss of satisfaction from physical overuse.
A part of me thinks that the way masturbation is meant to be a totally private activity closed off all routes for anyone to help me from a young age. It makes me wonder if trying to avoid all addictions would have been a hopeless endeavor from the start. Every time I admitted it to a counselor or therapist they either wouldn't take it seriously or didn't offer any routines that stuck.
Still, even though it is a rationalization for my own addiction, I am still glad I did not get addicted to alcohol or cigarettes or eating instead. It gives me pause to think how easily I could have started down that path with just a bit more openness to experience than I once had.
EDIT: And of course to prove my point about stigma I've been hellbanned for making this very post.
Wow, that's a big one. I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds like you've been through a lot. What was it about your job that burned you out? I'm sure this would be helpful for me to know, as well as others who may be in a similar situation.
I'm in the exact boat as you. The burnout set in so slowly that I didn't realized I was burned out until I stopped working and had the time to look at my life.
That’s what happened to me with my second burnout. The first one hit me like a brick. I’m glad the second one isn’t as bad as the first one mentally. I regret not taking enough rest during my first burnout as I never fully recovered, this time I’m taking things more seriously.
Yes it will improve. Just make sure you give yourself time outside of work. You don't need to do fancy things, sometimes just getting food you never had before, go see a building, simple life is what saved me from burnout. It took me almost a year (after a change of job) to start living again fully and break off my self deprecation and focus issues.
Did you work from home? Because my attention span also dropped significantly during covid. What helped was getting out of the house to get some work done.
I spent my twenties doing nothing but working. I put no time into learning basic self care skills like cooking, cleaning, or exercise. Weekends were wasted mostly lying in bed exhausted. I never dated.
In retrospect I was obviously depressed, but I took me nearly 10 years to understand why. My relationships with my parents and peers earlier in life had been so fraught that I became convinced I could never have a healthy relationship with someone. I had so little exposure to people whose relationships were healthy that the possibility hardly occurred to me. It’s difficult to describe what believing this for an extended period can do to a person.
I ultimately realized my mistake and set myself towards bringing more people into my life. However, in trying to correct this I made another mistake. I started taking finasteride in an effort to maintain my appearance, as I believed early baldness would negatively affect people’s initial impressions of me (particularly in romantic contexts). As it turns out, I’m one of the unfortunate few who have severe adverse reactions to this drug. Now, in addition to being socially and romantically inexperienced and out of shape, I’m also constantly fatigued, sexually impotent, and ironically still balding.
I again find it very difficult to imagine anyone, particularly a woman, would want anything to do with me. I see others my own age with families of their own now, while I have done nothing. It’s hard to manage the despair.
There is plenty of survey data to show that baldness reduces a man’s attractiveness. The effect size varies with age. Anecdotally, it also appears to have especially dire consequences in modern online dating.
However, this effect surely pales in comparison to the effect of the permanent sexual dysfunction finasteride can cause. It is frankly outrageous that regulators in the United States have adopted the drug companies’ willful ignorance of this.
In my case I find it impossible to imagine I will ever meet a partner who is comfortable with inability to participate in normative sexual relations, as well as being compatible in other dimensions. I could honestly say that it has ruined my life.
I think you should try weight lifting and see if that helps your testosterone levels to get the libido up. I’d suggest the 5x5 program.
I would also not rule out how much mental stress can turn off any body function.
Never give up friend!
Unfortunately, while lifting is probably advisable for overall wellness, it is highly unlikely to change things sexually. My testosterone has been tested and is quite high even after taking finasteride. From what I have gathered, the notion that the drug’s persistent effects are the result of altered testosterone levels is misinformed. Instead, people who are adversely affected by the drug seem to acquire a condition that resembles androgen resistance - their hormone levels may be fine, but their tissues no longer respond as they should. Some experts have hypothesized the root cause to be an epigenetic change, but there is really no financial incentive for getting to the bottom of it. As with tardive dyskinesia, the condition will likely remain poorly understood and practically untreatable for the remainder of our lives.
I’m afraid details would be a bit too graphic for HN, but I can assure you some of the changes to my body cannot be explained by stress. It is much more than just ED.
You say you have not dated, so your skepticism is perhaps warranted due to lack of real life experience.
There is survey data that can prove, or at least strongly point to pretty much any conclusion you want.
And yet, bald people are out there dating. As are overweight people and everyone else that doesn't sit squarely inside society's beauty standards. Have they done anything differently?
I think you misunderstand my position. I am not arguing that baldness makes dating impossible, only that it is more difficult.
I am now far more concerned with the sexual effects of the anti-baldness drug I took which, again, are likely permanent. Men without working genitals have next to no options - if you are interested I would suggest researching accounts from men with a venous leak, botched circumcisions, micropenis, spinal cord injury and so on. There is a reason why those who find partners despite such ailments are a subject of media interest - they are beating the odds.
I would certainly advise other balding men to simply accept it. The risk of ending up in a much worse position as a result of anti-baldness treatment is simply not acceptable.
> I think you misunderstand my position. I am not arguing that baldness makes dating impossible, only that it is more difficult.
If baldness makes dating more difficult, it is almost imperceptibly so. Being self-conscious about baldness might make dating more difficult. Being bald and ok with it is fine.
IIRC the only thing that really matters and is impossible to change is height. If you're tall enough, you're fine. Also, anecdata: I worked with a "vertically challenged" (his words!) guy and he was dating attractive women (taller than him). He was confident and was able to make fun of his height.
Interesting question, and it really boils down to "given what you know now, what would you have done differently in the past?"
Most regrets stem from poor information or prediction capability such as the story of the one that went into game development during college instead of a better course or the one that didn't focus on programming until late in life.
I think the biggest regrets doesn't come from lack of prediction or information but just from the lack of willingness to take risks.
Life is finite and so whether we take risks or not, we all end-up in the same place; but to those who took risks and it paid-off, the journey is much more pleasant and the reckoning at the end is much more fruitful.
Of course this is just a platitude and isn't really that helpful, since there are a lot of risk-takers that just end-up dead or worse-off.
But the idea is that a person can't win by not taking risks since we're all dead anyways and so maybe a calculated risk is the answer.
This might sound facetious, but my biggest regret is spending time regretting things.
I was socially awkward and tried to overcome it: had fun, had panic attacks, learned some tricks, but still just as socially awkward. Many other flaws of mine I’ve tried to overcome similarly and not really got anywhere. I just don’t care about them now and want to be unapologetically ME as I exist. This attitude has ended up paying dividends. No one cares if I’m awkward, or kinda mental or any of my other flaws. People actually seem to enjoy me… ?
Now at 29 I can look back at my teens-20s and how things could have gone differently, but there’s no point. Me then could never have been like me now and I couldn’t have convinced myself to, even with a time machine.
It’s like I’ve reached a point of “sour grapes” but without any cope. My life, successes, flaws and mistakes just… are… and I have to accept it. I’m done trying to go against my nature to transform to some state I’ll never reach, for god knows who.
I’ll continue to learn from my missteps. I’ll continue to try new things and get into and out of trouble for the frisk. I’ll continue awkwardly trying to elevate the people around me and keep them in good spirits.
But I’m done feeling inadequate for my flaws or wasting time trying to fight my nature.
Oh, I wish I started endurance running earlier but again, there was a reason I didn’t and I do now, so fuck it.
Recursive regrets can be a thing, and generally are what cause the most misery. Its a bit like being stuck in a ditch and digging it, making it near impossible to exit after a while.
Authenticity is endearing. And if you’re mindful enough to try and overcome your shortcomings, you’re probably mindful enough to be a genuinely good person albeit with a few rough edges like the rest of us. You sound great!
Don't stop doing something you enjoy, thinking there's time to pick it up again later. I played badminton a lot in my teens and loved it. Then I went to uni and didn't continue with it, moved around the world, and every move would casually think "wonder if there's a badminton club around". Now I've finally started playing again and the first thing I did was get an injury because I tried to play like a thin, fit 18 year old in the body of an overweight 39 year old. But I still love it and can't help regret 20 years of being too lazy to just look up a club and go.
This hits home. I started playing badminton when I was about 13 at a tiny club in a rural area. I ended up playing against adults most of the time. By the time I was 16 I was completing in the adult League with my club (instead of playing in my age category). I played for a while in uni too, but eventually quit because I moved to an area that didn't have a club. Always thought I'd resume paying. I'm 47 next year, so I've left it almost 30 years.
I regularly run an cycle, and kept my weight/waist the same as my 18 year old self, so that's it: tomorrow I'm going to find a club and join.
I would have prevented by parents from using psychoactive medicine on me. Even though I was very young and it could not be said to be a reasonable thing to deny your parents anything at that age I still should have been stronger. I later learned that it has implications for your development so might have changed who I am. And not for the better.
As a close second: telling girls I was interested was something I could not do for a long long time. It's still difficult and I know it's very common for men to have these sort of regrets but I managed to overcome at least some of that.
I could have studied harder too but it was very difficult for me.
Had a job interview in an unfamiliar, boring[0] midwestern city. Drove over early the day before to see if I could stomach living there. Saw that Medeski, Martin and Wood were on a marquee for a show that night and did the responsible thing of not going to see them and getting a good night of sleep before the interview.
I should've gone.
[0] I'm from a rust belt city in the Midwest. This isn't some kind of outsider prejudice against "flyover country".
Regretting is not just an isolated mental state. It's rather a mindset. If you are somebody who can't let the past be past but has to drag it into the present to continue the suffering tainting the future then you will always regret. Doesn't really matter what you do. There's always something to regret. But if you learn to let go of the past you'll feel free and live happy until the day you die.
Losing the relationship with my best friend and girlfriend when I was in my twenties. We had been friends ever since we were kids and then dated all through school and college. We both knew marriage was in the cards. But then she left. No one cheated. No broken trust. No drama. She told me she wanted to know what it's like to be alone, which I mean, fair enough after so many years of just us.
Since then, many wonderful, smart, and beautiful women have been in my life, but I have never loved anyone liked I loved her. It's an odd thing to regret, because if I could go back and live it again, I cannot think of anything I would have done differently.
I've made money and lost money. I should have applied myself more academically. I should have spent more time with my Dad. But when I am alone and reflecting on my life, that is the thing I regret the most.
Did you ever hear what she did after you? Because the "i want to stay alone excuse" usually means something else.
I don't think she deserves to be your biggest regret, you did nothing wrong.
There's a lot of very serious ones in here; I'm going to opt for something a bit lighter: I regret not being more diligent in money management throughout university and after graduation.
Working a ton, but not saving. Not investing. Living downtown for too many years. Going out to restaurants and bars multiple times a week. Buying a new iPhone every year. Not optimizing the career path for income (or, anything really). Never really going into debt beyond a (cheap) car payment, so it could be worse, but also not seeing personal capital grow.
Now, I'm hitting the stage where I feel this pull to try an independent venture; and maybe even leave the software industry. But I don't know how to do it financially. Its not just the runway in my bank account which could be measured in months; its the lifestyle.
I'm in my 40s now but I didn't get serious about saving and managing money until my mid-30s. Lived a very fun but expensive lifestyle downtown in a major city for many years while single.
I'd be a lot closer to some of my financial goals if I had been more focused on saving through my 20s and 30s. While my family is doing fine compared to many others, it feels like I'm always trying to catch up. This really starts to hit home when you add kids.
The first one (of many) that comes to mind is not looking to the future when I started life on my own. Had someone told me when I was in my 20s that a day would come much sooner than retirement age when I would be sick of my career (and had I listened--not at all a given) I would have been much farther ahead in my life now. If I had started investing right from the start, especially as the stock market was booming back then, I could have retired some time ago.
Related to that, I wish I'd found and fostered some sort side gig that would have allowed me to eventually ditch the 9-to-5 work life.
I wish I had realized how important it is to find some place you enjoy living (for whatever reason--friends, recreation opportunities, favorable weather, etc.), and then doing what you can to make a life there. Instead, I pursued jobs wherever they took me and I think my family paid a price for that instability. I didn't realize for a long time, but I think that I, too, paid a price for all those relocations in pursuit of the next job.
And then related to that, I wish I had not been so optimistic about my jobs. I should have realized that no matter how convincing the dream being sold to me, it was never going to be that good. I should gave treated my jobs as paychecks, as means to another end, not something into which I should pour the best of my attention and purpose of life.
My school years were utter misery. It was the worst period of my life.
I wish I had just stopped going. I was bright enough to teach myself, there was a decent library on my commute.
I wasted over a decade of my life unhappy. It was a good life lesson, it made me stronger and wiser and more grateful, but looking back it's pretty fortunate I'm still here to reflect on that lesson.
Schools, particularly high schools, needs to be completely reformed. They are prisons for the young.
My only regret is I never cared to exercise physically. I hate exercising with passion but I probably would be terrifically fit and flexible if I had been putting just some very-very small but systematic effort throughout my whole life. Not a serious regret though, just a missed opportunity (I still am reasonably fit).
Oh, that's a hard one, since I have two major regrets in my life:
1. Not being more outgoing in university. Feels like that made things like getting a good job way harder than it could have been, and left me in a situation where making friends is difficult, especially offline.
2. Not investing more into my YouTube channel in the earlier days, especially back in 2017. I covered a game which was super popular back then, and many of my random videos from that time did extremely well views wise (one is now at about 5 million views because of it). If I'd built more of a fanbase then, I'd probably be far more successful on the platform now.
I'll give this a go as it took me far too long to work this out - and some might disagree with me.
Taking every single ounce of advice people give to you.
I've found that everyone has a pathway in life, a way they are able to unlock and achieve their full potential. I found that what works for one person, may not always work for another. When I was starting out I would listen without question to anyones advice, peers, managers, business owners and attempt to shape myself to accommodate that advice & guidance - to only find that it would stifle me. Everyone has an opinion on how to do things best, but sometimes you just need to believe in yourself and your own capabilities.
Now I'm not saying don't ever listen to anyone, just be selective on who you listen to.
I am 33 years old haven't gotten a programming job yet. I could be making so much money now if I'd done it years ago. I'm hoping to finally make that change in the next few months.
But I couldn't stick to one language or specialization, I have a bunch of half-working projects and nothing finished. I kept switching depending on what interested me at the time. And I kept putting it off due to poor mental health and travel.
I'll never catch up to people that started in their early 20s, but I hope I can figure out how to climb the ladde as quickly as possible.
If I could go back I would finish one thing before starting another.
I also wish I had studied computer vision at uni instead of being the idiot teenager that did game development.
Same here. Mid thirties. Friends are running successful companies, making 6 figures, in early retirement. I'm still living in a small apartment struggling with a Swiss cheese resume.
My advice to others: don't think "I'm still young, there's still time." Push push push today! You will rapidly run out of time. All through my twenties I did various jobs, I thought that great software job was just around the corner. Turns out it's not that easy and when you're older people expect a lot more from you.
Why not study medicine and become a doctor? The web dev industry is too ageist and mostly runs on churning new-grads, whereas as a doctor, gray hair is an advantage not a perceived "disability".
Or try less hip domains in SW development popular with gray beards like embedded. Pay isn't as hot as web dev, but age is not a problem.
Edit, since I'm comment throttled and can't reply: In my country studying medicine is free/vey cheap. And SW devs don't make six figures here so studying to become a doctor is way better for your bank account and job security than competing with thousands of new-grads in an ageist industry.
This is strange advice? I would assume becoming a doctor is hard, extremely expensive, takes a long time and not something you should go into because ‘you see your friends making 6 figures’
My daughter went to med school right out of college and is just now doing her last year of fellowship in her specialty. Next year, she'll be earning much more than I do. It was expensive, but not enormously so compared to what one will earn.
Webdev is risky as an older person if thats all you know because its the most popular, and therefore most competitive.
My advice is to use webdev as a backup to a specialisation of some kind, ideally something you can grow with. Embedded is a great choice, and its definitely more technical work.
I’ve been a software engineer for many years, I stick at it because I enjoy it. Paying well is secondary. It requires a lot of focus, but the enjoyment of solving problems and being creative, is what drives me, not financial. That’s why I still do it. If you can find that enjoyment, don’t worry about not catching up, it will come.
I read the number of developer jobs doubles every 5 years. So with 5 years experience you’d be in the top 50%
>I read the number of developer jobs doubles every 5 years
Is there any indication this will go on forever? Moore's law is also dead. At one point "software is eating the world" will also come to an end. In my city it's already more difficult to find a plumber than to find an app/web developer.
well, nothing is certain. My point was, starting is better than not starting and regretting that you are too late to start. Deciding what to start is the question.
> I'll never catch up to people that started in their early 20s, but I hope I can figure out how to climb the ladde as quickly as possible.
I programmed from been a kid in the 80's, I truly loved it (still do) but I didn't start my full time career in programming til I was nearly 30 (I trained as an industrial electrician because I didn't think I was smart enough to be a software engineer - crippling self confidence issues and a horrific upbringing - ended up working minimum wage),
I shot up the ladder and in my early 40's I'm exactly where I would have been had I started at 21 - the later start and working different jobs in difference industries gave me a soft-skillset I wouldn't have otherwise gotten.
So while you are starting a few years after me its well within the realms of possibility if you get the right breaks.
> And I kept putting it off due to poor mental health and travel.
I've been you, quite literally. And with an extremely similar age timeline even.
I won't tell you _you will make it_ because we are not owed a specific outcome in exchange for our efforts, but I can tell you it can be done. Channel that regret into creating the proper scaffolding to propel yourself into trying to make it work.
If you don't end up _making it_ at least you will be able to say you did indeed try your best until you couldn't.
The ideal best time to do it was ten years ago. Next best time is today.
> I'll never catch up to people that started in their early 20s, but I hope I can figure out how to climb the ladde as quickly as possible.
I was in a similar position a couple years ago. You don't need to catch up. Just pick a certain direction, i.e. frontend, backend, embedded, devops and stick to it. Once you got a certain years in the industry, it is easy to find better paying jobs and it is way easier to get hired.
For any thing I might wish had been different, there was a reason, whether I know it or not, that I did something that looks bad. I've become more able to accept my past even though things look quite bleak to me these days. In that past I learned some things that give me ideas of what I want to do now, and I'm grateful for that.
Recently I’ve told those close to me “any decision with enough hindsight can be seen as good or bad” - like we wanted to sell some Pixar Cars play sets a while ago but never got around to it in a year or so.
This week Disney+ just debuted Cars: On the Road a series and now they are popular again here at home. Went out and got them cleaned up and back in action. So failed at the sale goal for over a year, then they failure turned into a convenient win that was unforeseen cuz I had no idea a new Cars bit was coming.
I did get a hint at the grocery store though when I saw a new die cast character. Some kinda rusty monster truck. Yes…I am trying to collect them all…
A little late to the party, but my biggest regret is not making choices earlier in life. Always had many interests. In high school I did many extra extracurricular activities, I was programming at a local software company, I played piano in a band, I took guitar lessons because wanted to be a rock guitarist, started 3 studies in university, etc etc. It caused a lot of stress, and I never was really good at any of these.
Everyone always says you have to think about your what you want to do in life, but equally important is what not to spend time on. You can't have it all. If you want everything you end up with nothing.
Although I'm doing fine at the moment I see old friend having advanced further in their careers, due to focus, less stress and becoming really good at something. I kind of regret not giving my life direction in the past, choosing something and go for it.
My biggest regret is drifting apart from family members and friends. I moved to a new state which was great for my marriage and my career, but it has slowly distanced me from the rest of my family.
I've got a whiteboard on my wall with phrases I want to internalize and maybe turn into mantras. One of them is:
"Guilt and regret kill many a man before their time."
I regret many things in life. If I could go back I would do things very differently. I would be kinder. More hard working. Humble. Have integrity. Uplift the people around me. Explore the world.
It's very depressing when I look at my life that way. So I just look at today. How do I make the most of today. If I get hit by a bus will I be satisfied with what I did.
I was in Silicon Valley just before the start of Dot-Com with nearly a decades experience running a couple of software startups (in Texas, not in a high tech city) working at Apple and left to go back home thus missing out on enormous opportunities. I thought Apple would go out of business and figured no point in sticking around. What a doofus... I never looked around and asked, would my experience be useful somewhere?
My career was OK but who knows where I might have wound up.
I followed your profile and believe I found your github. You have hundreds of repos and hundreds of stars? You're a rockstar and humanity would be at a loss to lose you.
Everything and Nothing. Leaving the comfort zone more often is something which will make you grow. And I didn't do that in the past. Bit of a life story:
I'm 36 now. When I turned 22 in 2008, my mom surprised me with her having sarcoidosis, a disease which will turn functional cells into non-functional ones. Quite an issue when it starts in your lungs. A year later, my father surprised me with him having cancer.
Long story short, they passed away in 2013 and 2017. I should also mention that I have four younger siblings. I raised my little sister until the beginning of 2020, when she turned 18. And then, the pandemic hit.
I wish I'd talked more to my dad. I wish I would have been more socially active, would have gone on a fishing trip with him. Worked on the car. You know? Things you do with your dad. Instead, I buried myself knee-deep into coding. I read books. But I missed life.
And I accumulated debt. Oh, am I in debt right now. 46k still left to pay off, with which I'm struggeling.
And the path I choose? Up to today, I don't even know if it's the right one. I'm a coder. But from time to time, I need external validation. I need "the stage". And I love to teach other people stuff. Working from home, I realized that I don't have any problem talking directly into a camera. Just recently, I moderated a panel discussion with 7 participants and an audience of ~100 people. I wasn't aware of me being able to do that. But there were people in my company who believed in me and said "Do it!" and I decided to leave my comfort zone.
That was maybe the best feeling I had for a long, long time.
tl;dr:
a) Avoid the debt trap
b) Spend time with your loved ones, as much as you can. Grow bonds.
c) Leave your comfort zone. Experiment. And never be afraid to fail.
Kudos to your strength and caring for your siblings.
> I need "the stage".
Maybe this can be fixed easily? Like go on conference on behalf of your company and give a talk?
I also work from home 99%. Recently, we did a non-profit event and sold some kind of lottery tickets. Proceeds were donated 100% for local causes. Getting out there and selling tickets for 3-6 hours actually gave me energy. I had conversations with strangers that just went extremely fluid. I enjoyed that, but would hate to do it as a full time job.
Thank you! Yes, I'm currently trying to get more involved on that side. Also, outside of my job, but I'd like to have some training there. Which is currently, from a financial point of view, not possible. But I'll figure it out, as always. :)
When I was a kid, I sold most of my old computers and game systems to get new ones. I wish I hadn’t done that. That stuff would be awesome to have now.
I thought the same and bought a few older systems. Now they gather dust on a shelf, because I got bored of them after a few hours. But at least the feeling of need is gone, I guess?
I kept all my old consoles and even picked up some new ones and spares at Goodwill over the years. I consider myself a retro gaming enthusiast.
They mostly sit in storage. Very occasionally I'll take them out to play & stream something. Given the state of emulation these days it is difficult to justify keeping them.
Typically, I’d agree. Then, when I hook up my Dreamcast, the physical parts are great. The controller, disks, and of course the sounds of DC. With my Atari 2600, the physical feel and sounds of the cartridges. Emulation is great for playing a game but there’s a magic to the hardware too.
I'm torn on this. My life is pretty great. Well paid, leaving a job I hate for a job I think I will love in the next few weeks, loving family. Things would be drastically different if not for the path I actually took, but still.
I'm a developer, and a decent one - not FAANG level by any means, but decent. But, my degree is from a school nobody's ever heard of, in an unrelated humanities subject, with a horrendous, barely-graduated level GPA. I was much more concerned with partying and video games. If I had it to do over again, I would have majored in CS, studied, and actually applied myself.
So I'm torn. If I had had my eye on CS, I might have gone to a school like CMU or similar, would have been excited by the material as opposed to the classes I slogged through, and maybe ended up in SF or NYC in the 2008-2010 timeframe. That was a super exciting time in the startup space. Who knows where I'd be now, but it certainly wouldn't be where I actually am, and I really like where I actually am.
> I'm a developer, and a decent one - not FAANG level by any means, but decent
This statement rubs me the wrong way. What does that mean being "FAANG level"? It's either a misconception of what is going on there or underestimating yourself... Or both
Lack of talent at the job, or lack of ability to perform in their notoriously-grueling interviews (I'm brain-dead after ~2 hours of a normal interview battery, personally) means that a whole lot of devs can never make FAANG-tier money, because they can't hack it at the job, because they can't hack it at the interview for one or more of several reasons, or because being pretty sure that the second thing is the case means they never make the enormous time investment to try.
So we're stuck in the middle of the trimodal dev-comp curves, permanently. Except for those stuck in the bottom one. Those two curves are most developers.
So we're "not FAANG-level", the most important consequence of which is we do alright (middle-class lifestyle, judged by what we used to consider middle-class before that started to slip downward to include all non-poor on account of the middle class shrinking and everyone wanting to avoid acknowledging it) but will never, ever get rich (upper-middle money or higher) working our day job.
That's the ego of software developers speaking. The presumption that there's a strict hierarchy of competence based on what company you've worked at is a dumb and arrogant idea imo. Sure you might've passed a tough interview test, but you're doing CRUD that every else does, so putting devs onto that ladder is silly especially when the interview does not reflect how well one does at the job/getting results, with all it's variances and challenges.
It certainly could be both! And I get what you mean, I always feel weird if I say something like that because it's not exactly what I mean but it's the best way I know to articulate it.
I'm sure every FAANG has dead weight, but I've always had the impression that in part due to the compensation the best of the industry tend to gravitate there. That certainly may have changed in the last decade when I think that idea got solidified in my mind.
There are plenty of middling engineers at FAANG-class companies. It is true that they have more rigorous standards and employ above average engineers, but that isn't the primary driver of the comp: these companies have to pay a premium to attract engineers in part because working at a huge (and in many cases unpopular) company isn't fun.
Never being able to achieve financial security or wealth.
I live in a shabby house, and never feel I can afford anything whilst also trying to save for old age and knowing it will be an improverished life.
I've never been able to figure out how to make enough money to not be a salary slave. The fear of job loss and having to work til I die doing work I don't enjoy (and having no idea what else I could do and still keep a roof over our heads) is crushing. Every day.
And then I see folk succeeding in every financial way, buying; building and refurbishing homes, holidays, cars, socialising, clubs, private healthcare, private schools, private tuition, retirement, none of which I can do for my wife and son.
45 now and my body, brain and brain hurt from chasing a salary each month that's just enough to keep me going for the next month.
You're not alone on this one! Although I have savings, I'm also not able to achieve enough monthly earnings to leave me in a (much) more comfortable position. Last month I did a lot of interviews for newer jobs, but got rejected at almost everything I applied. And I read a lot of indie hackers reaching 1K, 1.5K, and so on, and I can't even get a single cent out of any idea. And how have I tried to come up with ideas for web apps! My current solution is just to rest a little bit, stop reading too much internet crap (HN included), and focus on what I have and can realistically get in the short/medium term.
Therapy - if only to get me analyzing it rather than letting it control my life.
It's still there, and it's still a struggle. I've learned to mostly accept it as just how my brains works. I can recognize when it's causing me to make the wrong choice, and override that. Long walks really help when it's bad.
Good question. I guess I have made some assumptions about it that I still hold onto. Like, it will be less pay with longer hours. Not really in a great spot right now to career switch either.
The crap I tolerated from others when I was younger.
Not necessarily within relationships - that helped me define my standards and boundaries, raised my appreciation for functional relationships, yada yada ... it sucked ass but it served a purpose.
I mean more the treatment from customers and coworkers in my teens and early twenties, the restaurant jobs and summer gigs when I was just a skinny, horrifically awkward young woman that was busting her ass for minimum wage (or less) and didn't know how to stand up for herself. How I just froze up and smiled and didn't talk back. I should have humiliated those men. Instead they just went on about their day to do it to someone else.
Now I work from home and I'm too grouchy looking and, I guess, too old to get much of that any more, which is a blessing - but as far as regrets, I wish I'd found my spine in the aughts.
I started a business which was successful and dropped out a year before I finished my ChE degree. I had decided that I didn't want to go into oil (which was the most likely career path) and that I really enjoyed writing software and I was making more than I would as a ChE, so why bother? I've been writing software ever since.
However...not having graduated has bothered me more than I thought it would.
I have a letter from the Dean allowing me back as long as I go full time and finish as a ChE. It's been over 20 years so I'm not sure how much weight it carries now, but I doubt it's something I'll ever take the time to do. Looking back, it would have been better to tap down my enthusiasm temporarily and just finished up. Back then a year seemed like such a long time.
If it makes you feel any better, I read a clickbait article this week on why young people shouldn't save for their retirement. The gist is that they can easily make up the difference in their high-earning older years, so it's not worth the sacrifice of trying to save in their low-earning years, especially when the market is flat. I don't necessarily agree, but it is a perspective I hadn't heard before.
I'd disagree with that, I think it's worth the sacrifice to learn the discipline needed to save. Think about what you'd spend it on otherwise? Something consumable, most likely. Something that won't have any benefit for you in the long run, or possibly even tomorrow.
Choosing to go to a mediocre university to study something weird instead of doing a CS degree at a prestigious university (I would have been able to get in).
I never felt real acceptance from my parents. Which made the first woman I fell in love with, who was very beautiful and sweet and totally accepting of me, nearly impossible to get away from once I realized that she was unsuitable for me to make a permanent (and sole) life partner. Cue many years spent seeing her on and off while trying to reclaim the same spark elsewhere and fucking up other perfectly-good (if never quite the same, and certainly less intense) relationships.
Unfortunately it seems that a lot of my… sexuality (this word seems like a vast oversimplification in this case) got tied up with her and is basically now gone, and I’m still processing this years later.
I did retain the self-confidence she gave me though, but the cost…
Well waste is perhaps a strong word. But I bought a lot of unnecessary crap that I didn't need. I could've put a lot more money into investments and I would likely have double the amount of capital I have today.
Sounds insignificant compared to some of the things I'm reading here but I regret not participating in sports as much as I should have when I was in school.
Think it would have had a huge affect on my social skills, fitness and overall mental and physical health
Ha! I tell myself exactly the same thing, I even registered to Mt Gox (which I think - my memory is not to clear - included sending some identification papers) to finally just chickening out when it was time to put my money by instead asking my non-tech family what I should do - which of course was not to put money in that weird thing.
Now, I half have a large regret and half tell myself that I would have lost it all anyway.
The price of bitcoin went up so much after mtgox went bankrupt that the bitcoin the bankrupcy trustee has found is currently worth about $2.8 billion.
At some point in the next year or two, up to 90% of that will be returned to the 25,000 creditors who filled in the paperwork to make a claim years ago.
Meh, would probably have sold once my $10 investment reached $1000 or $10,000 or so anyways, no way most people would've kept their head cold (and _gambled_) on it going even further.
Nothing. In fact, I’ve worked hard to come to accept that of which occurs in my life that is undesired - be it from my actions or actions that are outside my control. Everything that has occurred has happened for me, not to me. I’ve learned a great deal along the way and build my character from all my experiences. And just like everyone in this thread, you wouldn’t be who you are without these “regrets”. Hindsight is one thing, having regrets is another. I don’t like to say I regret anything, I’m just living and learning, accepting and letting the pieces fall into place. Life is too short to live with regrets.
It’s not a regret but would’ve been a different life path - in 2003 I let people talk me out of pursuing Intellectual Property Law because of my interests in music and technology intersecting with the law - and the reason they cited? There’s no money in IP law.
Right, the folks working in Texarkana on Federal cases for Samsung and the like drive used Hyundai minivans and buy ramen in bulk these days /s.
Pretty glad I didn’t go that route though because deep down I love competition, cocaine, and strippers. About as much of a 180 from present day me.
Be careful with this regret. In my country you can go to jail if you punch people and harm them, even in self defense. Running away from fights is a better deal than having a police record.
I try not to regret things because in most cases that would just amount to second guessing myself with 20/20 hindsight. I do regret this one thing.
I went to boarding school from grade 5. You are probably picturing a fancy place with the "elite of tomorrow" walking around in smart school uniforms. My boarding school wasn't like that at all. It was located in a very small village, so small that it didn't even have a single shop. It cost like 250€ a month and you can accurately deduce the rest from that. Yes, some of the minders were clearly alcoholics. Yes, there were lots of troubled youths. Yes, some of the food barrels really did have "pig feed or millitary" stenciled on them. But they tried and on the whole they did a good job. I have to admit that in retrospect.
There are many activities you can do there. Painting, singing, pottery, metalworking, theatre, dance and all kinds of sports. There was even a warhammer table! This being Germany you can play soccer all day everyday.
I, however, was very cool, you see. I was so cool that I was too cool to do any of the activities on offer. So I spent my days on walks with my best friends just smoking and drinking and discussing how we would get rich. We did not get rich.
Now at 41 I am a non-smoker and learning to play soccer. If only I had played in my youth. If only I had been a person who wasn't repulsed by sweat and effort. If only I had the confidence to really try at something hard. If only I could have seen myself as someone with the potential for strength, for speed, as a team player. If only I had known myself a little better back then.
If you live and work in Ireland for 5 yrs you can become Irish as well as British, and effectively get your EU rights back. If I was younger, I'd be very tempted. Of course this door may not be open for ever with united Ireland on the horizon. If you don't do it, you may end up replying "I wish I had" to an identical Q to this on HN in 20 yrs time ;)
I’m quite familiar with Ireland (I’ve lived there), and the Irish government’s process for citizen applications. Hard no from me for various reasons. It’s why I said “other than Ireland”.
I have other options though and I’m actively exploring them. But unsurprisingly none are “easy” :-)
Care to spill the beans on why "Hard no?". I have to say that seeing the way the UK is going, (or should I say England since the rest of the UK probably will break off before long, Scotland for sure) , Ireland looks tempting to me. I'd worry about anti-English sentiment there. People bitch about the Irish health service but NHS probably no better now it seems to me.
I regularly suffer homophobia. (I still visit regularly). I’ve been spat at, intimidated on public transport, stared at, pointed at, ignored in cafes etc. Never experienced that anywhere in the UK…or anywhere else I’ve traveled and lived.
Your concerns about anti English sentiment are valid. I got tired of the “we’re just joking” excuse.
The housing crisis is extreme. Foreigners often think it can’t be that bad. It’s 10x worse than you think.
Car centric society (understandable - it’s been built that way).
Similar issues to the UK when it comes to landlord politicians, housing policies, healthcare, transport, prices etc.
Hard to make true friends. That’s from my friends who have lived there over 10 years and are very sociable people.
I could go on but it’ll be opinion and not direct experience and I don’t want to offend any Irish people reading this.
Thank you for taking time to reply :) I'm very sorry you had that experience especially homophobia. After asking the reasons, I wondered if you'd come back and say you were non-white , which seems to be not be fun to be particularly in some rural parts of Ireland. I know an Indian guy who was happy in Dublin last time I spoke to him... but have heard horror stories too.
I have a number of lovely Irish friends. Some living here in England, some I met in USA. At the same time, if people from a minority group are having a hard time in Ireland, I think its fair to call that out and its not an insult to the Irish in general. Of course, Britain was very homophobic in the not so distant past too.
Yeah Ireland does actually seem more car-centric than England, partly just comes of being less densely populated (which is one of the nice things).
My impression is housing crisis even worse in Ireland then England. England at least has affordable regional cities especially in Midlands and North.
One thing I really missed when going to Ireland on holiday, was the English Rights of Way legislation. We have clear public footpaths here, whereas in Ireland, access and relationships with landowners seems more sketchy.
However, for us English, and our kids, our own country seems to be going completely mad, and Ireland is an obvious way to have an insurance policy a.k.a EU passport. Then again, looks like a lot of EU countries are going a bit mad right now. I'm not convinced that the EU people were sad to exit from, will be the same sort of EU in 20 yrs time.
So far, squandering a relationship with someone I really loved. I traded my closest connection for selfish hedonism and I've spent 8 years trying to find that bond again.
Nothing. If we were to go back in time, we'd make the same `mistakes' again as that's who we _were_ (its the cumulative development since those points in time that gave a different perspective that would make us act differently).
Most of our life is failures. Once I hit a particularly low point (and also with age), I appreciate the journey much much more as cliche as it sounds. For a different reason - with an expectation to mostly fail, we are set free to truly live.
At age 40+, my biggest regret is that I mess around with a lot of things but never focused on one long enough to make any meaningful progress.
My list of messing around:
- Back in high school, I read a biography of Bill Gates and found it cool to learn some programming. Back then we were taught FOXBASE but I taught myself FOXPRO because it is more pretty with all those Windows UI. I asked my parents if I could do some work for their university (they worked as professors back then) but didn't get any reply. I messed around for a bit longer but then my bad grades caught up so I never did any programming for a long while
- In university I got fancied by level design (big thing in late 90s/early 2000s), again only learned a few tools and made some samples. Never drove myself deep enough and gradually lost interest after a couple of years
- Fast forward maybe 10 years, finally mustered enough courage to teach myself C++ as game programming seems to be fun. Learned a lot and made a few simple games including half of a Ultima spin-off in 3 months. Life was a bit hard at the time so had to focus on getting a job and working as a salesman (really hate it).
- Worked hard to squeeze into IT as I still like programming. Wasted a few years on that sales job but eventually landed a BA job. After a couple of hops I managed to land an IT job (current one). In the middle married my wife and got a baby, but never truly found the focus/passion of life. Actually, the closer to my target IT job, the less passionate I'm. I still pick up hobbies nowadays (am reading binary analysis today) but don't really think I can drill deep in any of them.
Yeah Ian see that. Actually I kinda give up and just pick up new things and drop them at will. Ironically Kid, work and school leave me little time for hobbies actually. I guess this is...more productive?
This is a tricky question because I regret nearly everything about the last 20 years and feel that I'm living in a bizarro reality where it all went wrong. Dot Bomb. 9/11. Forever wars in the Middle East. Housing Bubble. The former president. Global Pandemic. So many unforced errors it boggles the mind! And the way I let the world use me and make me miserable enough to use others.
There was no point along that progression where I experienced the feeling of having a win. Just levels upon levels of chronic exhaustion, overwhelm and burnout. To the point where that enduring suffering became my reality.
I wish I would have learned about manifestation (reality shifting) earlier. I didn't know that I helped create the reality I was in by fixating on the negative and dwelling on the past.
Since I was awakened, I've been shifting along the multiverse through meditation towards realities that better support spirit and magic. I always thought the dawning of the New Age had to do with time, but time is an illusion. It's more like, a dimension just outside ours that we grow into phase with through our vibration, swaying the collapse of the wave function (or whatever you want to call free will). Anyone can do this at any time, but for whatever reason we suppress that lucidity and deny our relationship with creation and our contribution through co-creation.
What I'm saying is that from all the ways I let the cold hard facts of logic and ego and the quest for personal gain fail myself, I've found meaning through faith/hope/love and service to others. From the inward flow of the Sith to the outward flow of the Jedi. Or whatever pop culture reference floats your boat. The hippies were right man, all you need is love.
On a similar theme with others, not enjoying my youth. Well, I'm still 21, but I'm strongly career focused. Didn't go to college or university. I'm very socially isolated and miserable despite raking in money working in software. I act about 10 years older than my age so when I do meet people my own age I struggle to relate. I tried filling the emptiness with money, psychedelics, and various substances but it didn't make the situation any better.
Would it have been better to go to university just for the social experience? I don't know. Is signing up for a mountain of debt worth it to build a network? Some university students would surely kill to be in my position, so do I have a right to feel like this?
I feel like a broken person and I don't really know how to turn things around. I think the "just go to clubs" advice is overprescribed and in my experiences it's just people way older than me that attend anyway. The door to social circles is locked and triple bolted now that I'm in the working world.
I'm 25 and I've never really been in a relationship. I'm an attractive guy but I've consistently punched below my weight class with women. Most women that I've actually been interested in I've been too scared to actually make a move. Now I'm in the south bay and while my career is nice I just practically never have random encounters with women and it's getting me really down. I'm going to be moving to SF soon to hopefully change that, but I don't really know anyone in the city and I don't really like the idea of dealing with all the crime up there. Meanwhile I look with jealousy upon my south bay friends who already have relationships. Relationships and women are something that I really wish I had figured out when I was younger. I'm not even sure how a girl would react if I told her I've never been in a relationship, but probably not positively. Unfortunately this area seems like it's going to be the biggest struggle in my life, and I hate the fact that something so grueling for me seems to be so easy and, well, fun for the other 99% of people out there.
Also I'm not sure if I'm gay. My life experience leads me to believe that I might just be gay and in denial. I'm not sure. Wish I had figured this out in college.
Another one: I wish I hadn't done sports in high school. My natural interests were always along the lines of music, acting, programming, etc. I never really liked sports, honestly. But my parents kind of pushed me into it. So I spent 4 years in high school sucking at sports. I did try, very hard at certain points, but I'm just not a natural athlete. I think it made me a stronger person to have to deal with that but I wish I had been able to pursue things I was actually interested in during HS.
I don’t think it matters if you’ve never been in a relationship, you’re not looking for the right women if they are upset with you about that.
Also you don’t have to come up with a label for your interests.
Seems like you need guidance in your life. Lots of ways to get guidance, idk if HN has a DM feature but I think we have some common areas. Anyways, hope you have figure out some stuff
> I hate the fact that something so grueling for me seems to be so easy and, well, fun for the other 99% of people out there.
In reality, that number is way, WAY lower, especially at your age? Perhaps 10-20%. The rest is struggling too, in one way or another (some may not realise it at the time).
Careful, you are young, don't wait and hope that things will get better without you doing something to change the situation. Ask for help now. Don't wait until you are 35,45,55,65...
The best thing you can do now is act and do something. Failure is better than no action.
I should have given web development in the 90s my complete attention while in high school but thought it was too complicated and too great a challenge. There weren't as many resources to learn from and I didn't have access to mentors. I didn't have any idea what was involved with the work. I regret not trying. I had the interest and the time.
I first went to college in 2002 intending to pursue an engineering degree. At some point before I started school my dad (who had learned programming in the 90s but never did it professional) told me he thought I'd enjoy a programming career and I should think about switching majors. I dismissed it as teenagers tend to do with their parent's advice. Ended up dropping out of school and drifting through my 20s without much to show for it because I didn't know what I wanted to do. It wasn't until 2012 that I went back to school for CS. Can't help but think about how different things might be if I'd gone into the "right" major from the start and entered the industry making a decent salary 8-9 years earlier. But realistically I was a very different person 20 years ago, and just changing my college major probably wouldn't have fixed the things that prevented me from being successful the first time around.
Looking out for my dad more while I was at university. He was divorced, retired, and full of unhealthy habits. I could have come home and cook him a nice meal, do some woodwork side-by-side and tell him what I was working on (he was very proud of me).
He suddenly died from a heart attack on a Sunday afternoon, while I was scrambling to write a paper before the midnight deadline.
Normally people mean if they could change a decision they made about the past. I guess in that sense I should have been more critical when starting a business a few years back about who to bring along. I had my doubts about a certain partner, which turned out to be right. Maybe the biggest "hiring mistake" I've done.
Thinking I could time the market after a big drop on IPO day (thinking maybe it'd rebound - which it did but then subsequently dropped and dropped and dropped). Should've just gotten access to my stock ASAP and sold everything. Instead, I let it drop so far over 6+ months that basically got less than what I put in to exercise the options + AMT. This holding mentally came because I didn't actually need the money so I thought letting it sit would be beneficial (don't time the market) but holding all that in one stock was foolish and I wish I had better peers around at that time who forced me to sell. Instead, everyone was saying to hold. We all lost a lot of money over it.
The divorce didn't help either but I don't know if I regret that so much as had no real recourse about the whole situation. (My ex decided she no longer wanted to work and we split up over that)
I regret going to graduate school for CS. What an utter waste of time, especially graduating non-thesis. I also regret the amount of time I spent thinking about people who don’t think about me. Most people ultimately are just there for a season, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
My biggest regret was not to take path less travelled and the risks that would probably put me on a tougher journey, but more satisfying process.
I dabbed into programming when I was 25 and thought I was late. I also killed my business pre-maturely going the safe route when first hardship occurred. I suppose fear got better of me.
I am incredibly grateful for where I am, but the monkey brain always wants more and asks what if...
Great question. I wish I would not change anything. Sometimes, I wanted to get out of technology and tried to find another job. Nonetheless, it was a waste of time. I should focus on software development because it's my strength. All of us should use our strength to be a giver. Money will follow.
That can be survivorship bias. Money will follow if you have a great network and/or live in a hot area with tons of networking and jobs opportunities for your trade.
Being good at what you do is not always enough to succeed financially.
I wish I had continued programming after high school, instead I pursued a career as a furniture maker, scraped a living for 10 years, it formed my entire personality which in retrospect was really unhealthy. I also realised too late that everyone around me was being propped up by their rich parents/partners.
Recently changed careers and now happily programming and on my path to being a bit more financially secure. I can now design and make things I want in my spare time, without having to worry about where the money is coming from.
The comment someone made about everyone losing ten years somewhere really resonated with me.
Kinda trivial but: Neglecting my upper body strength when I was much younger. Just to have more of a "reserve" against injury and for when I get older and start losing it naturally. This is something I've mentioned to both of my kids.
I really wish I had just got in shape when I was a teenager. I was a lot more athletic then, and I’m not even very old now, but I’ve managed to fuck to my knee and various bad habits and choices have butchered my lung capacity.
I would go back and complete education rather than dropping out of school. I had to waste 7 years of my life in order to understand the importance of education.
Eventually, got a Masters in Statistics. But I wish I could run this back and get those lost years.
When I was studying for Master's in Sweden about 20 years back, I had a crush on an Austrian girl. I was so timid and had lack of confidence that I never asked her out due to fear of rejection. In fact most of the decisions and I took and still taking are influenced by fear of rejection.
I know how to live a happy life theoretically but don't know how to implement in the real life.
Sometimes I feel life had given me quite a few opportunities and squandered them
All of this poignant reminiscing reminds me of action buttons, aka Tim Rogers, latest review on YouTube. If you like games he puts out some of the best content around. If you aren't, skip to part five of the review to hear the part that this reminded me of.
Part five is a wonderful video essay on memory, nostalgia and regret. Tim is also in a unique position to talk about this as he has a condition where he never forgets anything. It's really a fascinating video.
Also general shout out to action button, all the videos are fantastic.
I was a kid and my grandmother was at her dead bed. I saw her from outside, with all sort of devices hooked up, and couldn't make it inside and asked to be out. I wish my mom dragged me in by my ear even if she had to
One of my recent big regrets was not refinancing my home in 2020/21 when rates hit the floor, before I quit my well paying job to go FT on my business.
Life was crazy and I kept putting it off. But I could have cut my rate in half.
Going to grad school. Took on a bunch of debt, which would have been fine if I'd been able to pursue my original career choice. I got MS my last semester and am now stuck in the limbo of 'able to work so I can't get my loans discharged' but 'not able to do work that would PAY ENOUGH TO PAY OFF MY LOANS and not able to do the work I trained for'.
Possibly undergrad as well.
I think I would have done much better in the trades, honestly, but that was not an accepted/encouraged option in the early 00s. Especially for girls. My parents are still giving me guff for having left an office job.
A high paying, cushy job in tech / FAANG with great benefits and easy work/life balance can be as much of a crutch as it is a blessing.
With your own personal situation so good, it can be too easy to just stick to the default and not chase something that's more ambitious, but perhaps also more risky as well (whatever that is). The years go by fast and eventually you start wondering if its too late (it's not).
So, have gratitude and appreciate the good situation(s) you've found yourself in, but if there's some idea or action you can't seem to forget about, go do it.
I was always interested in IT, but studied business instead because my parents thought IT would be too stressful.
Ended up programming a distributed simulation optimization tool for my master thesis (in business), while already doing multiple online startups.
Do I regret not studying CS and following a SWE career? I really don't know because many skills from the business side have served me well too. Would I have started those companies without understanding customers, marketing, accounting, taxation, investing?
So I try not to regret things because I don't know the alternate timeline. Could be better, could be worse.
Similar story but I studied Physics. I've been on positions with more or less SW development, but switching to a real programmer job seems so hard while working full time...
Oh, I have plenty. Like not continuing to mine bitcoin circa 2010 while I was in high school, and then not buying a ton of bitcoin between 2014-2016 and then losing over 2 BTC in 2017.
Then there's the fact that I decided to go to a state school because I was entering with a decent amount of credits and entered a special program for tuition assistance (it sucked). Dropped out (which I also regret).
I regret not accepting the NSA's cooperative education program when offered.
I regret not deciding to live with my mother when my parents divorced.
I regret taking on a job with a ~3 hour commute as my first gig.
Not learning how to invest my money in early 20’s instead of spending it all on crap I didn’t need and not having the foresight to know I could have been in a much better position today financially had I just put my money away in the market rather than lighting it on fire with stupid material purchases that are in a landfill somewhere today.
If you are young and have an income stream, do your future self a favor and invest in a diversified fund as much as you can and a 401k and don’t touch it until you’re ready to retire. Compound growth is insane.
Weren't your purchases impacted the quality of life you had at the moment? I don't know your particular context, but living in the moment vs. preparing for future is an old and common theme to many (i.e. almost all) of us, and buyer's remorse is a real but unfair frame of thought to judge ourselves. Also, investment requires discipline and foresight (intelligence) that come a bit later, as we grow. I for one, am glad for acquiring the benefits of that growth when I did, although it didn't hurt to have had it earlier.
I like your take on this and you are kind to yourself, wish I could learn to take that perspective.
I’m not talking about spending money traveling and on experiences, I think those are worth every penny.
I’m talking about blowing money living paycheck to paycheck instead of growing my savings on designer clothes and modifying cars, etc. trying to look a certain way among people my age and trying to impress the opposite sex.
None of that stuff matters now and didn’t back then in retrospect. I found my spouse partaking in a free hobby.
I guess hindsight is 20/20 as they say, back then I was surrounded by social and single college friends looking to find partners to date.
Generally I believe it's important to learn from your mistakes, which are inevitable. If you're learning and trying to do better, then regret should fade with time.
I think the biggest mistake that I've made (that others might be helped to avoid by hearing about) was not to save money. I've had a lot of money flow through my hands over the course of my career as a programmer, yet I have very little to show for it, and I'm not getting any younger.
Other than that, I mostly regret the times I've hurt people or not helped them but could have.
I would never think about regrets, my own or those of others. While there is always the lure of capitalizing on the knowledge, it's rarely worth it. Thinking about negative things (that is a regret after all) in the past is pointless -- you can't change it and you don't know where your life would be if you 'just made that one change'. Changing your own life based on other people's regrets will yield unpredictable results. Live in the present and think about the future. Avoid regrets. They are a trap.
I wish I never entered grad school (or just get a one-year MS and leave). Turns out a PhD program which puts you at near-poverty level of salary for five years is bad for your mental health!
Bad question, because it is two questions that the OP treats as related (regret vs possibility to have done something differently in the past), but that are actually not.
For example, let's suppose that the answer to the question about the biggest regret is "not learning to swim while still a child" (I learned while being 31 years old), but the reason is that my mother could not teach me and actively opposed any other possibility for me to learn. This was not something I could change about my past, even in theory.
that I wasn't braver as a teenager and that I didn't stand up and fight for myself until I was much older. So many years lost to suffering because I was too afraid of consequences...
At the same time, around middle school something snapped and I stopped caring much about consequences, got in a fair bit of trouble that ended up costing me opportunities down the line.
My biggest regret was that I didn’t intervene in an argument between my mom and grandparents that ultimately led to a near estrangement between my mom and her family for several years that caused her a lot of pain.
It wasn’t my argument and not my “responsibility” per se, but I’m sure that I could have defused it, and I didn’t for reasons that seemed reasonable for 15 year old me.
Idea and execution had potential but I lacked networking or courage. Also professors was really dismissive about it. I could have it used in 2 different courses only.
I wished I pushed it harder to even different universities and courses.
Not getting a CS/engineering degree is my biggest regret. I would go back and get an engineering degree. I have 20 years of experience and I am a CTO. But even today CTO level openings need a CS/engineering degree from a brand name school. My resume won't make it past automated filters at top companies. When people say education and degrees don't matter, it just fills me with rage and regret.
I suspect that any organisation that filters you out because of the lack of a CS/engineering degree is probably an organisation that doesn't deserve you!
I recently got into a mindset where I thought I may die. I was alone and had sudden chest pain. Anyway, my mind wandered to this question and I fixated on the fact that I’ve dreamed about it my entire life and yet I haven’t made it happen.
I did walk away from that feeling pretty good. After all, I had no immediate regrets about the important things like family and friends.
Not finding a better home for my rescued Rainbow Lorikeet when I was moving countries. I had him since he was a baby, having found him with an injured wing in the middle of the road. We took him to the vet, who said that they were considered pests in Western Australia, so they'd just put him down; so I took him home instead.
I was moving from Australia to Sweden. I looked into bringing him with me, but how well would a tropical bird really do in _Sweden_, and would he be able to survive the stress of the journey? I decided to find him a good home.
I put an ad up for him on the local classifieds site. I was giving him away for free to a good home, with cage, feed, etc. My requirement was to meet the family first, and that they would promise to contact me immediately if something did not work out or if they changed their minds, and I would make other arrangements. I had hundreds of replies and went through them all. One of them was a family with a young daughter who already had one other friendly Rainbow Lorikeet. They sounded very nice, like they'd be an attentive and stable home, and I thought it'd be great for Goku to have another bird companion, too.
I met them and they seemed great. They were good with Goku. They said they'd take their time introducing the other lorikeet (I wasn't worried about this because they said they had lots of prior bird experience, and we discussed this point specifically to make sure we were on the same page with the introductions). They promised to send me updates and pictures, and we added each other on Facebook.
They sent a picture of Goku perched on their daughter's shoulder the next day and was so relieved because I thought I made a good decision. But after that, it was radio silence. I sent them a message asking how he's doing a week later, to make sure that all was good before I fly out. I got no response. I messaged again a month later, on Facebook, and got no response again. I tried again a few more months later, and then once a year or so for a few years, but they never replied to me. I wasn't spamming them demanding information or anything, just checking in at reasonable intervals, since they agreed to send me updates from the very beginning.
To this day I have no idea what happened to Goku, and feel like I betrayed him. I didn't pick the family carefully enough, and could have taken more time. I got too excited. I didn't even look at bird rescue operations, since for some reason I just assumed a regular home would be better. I'm certain that something bad happened: he got hurt, or they ended up not being the people I thought they were and sold him or something. Otherwise why would it just be total radio silence?
Basically everything from the age of 11 onward. I can't think of a single thing I'd do the same if I could do it all again, but probably my biggest would be not to go to university. I was too young and naive and the absolutely last thing I wanted to was work hard and study, and it had the biggest impact in terms of the direction my life took.
Not going to a counselor, psychologist or someone similar when I was in my teens or as a student. I certainly could have benefited having someone to talk to about internal issues I was dealing with.
Not doing sports, especially individual sports like martial arts or climbing when I was younger.
Choosing to care to much about how I'm perceived.
going to an Ivy League university under a government scholarship, which I then regretted so badly I had to break my 6 year required work contract and pay back ~400k including interest. probably set my life back at least 10 years.
i shouldve tried harder to evaluate my options but at 16 i just went with what everyone said was a good enough path.
Hah, I managed to start caring after high school, but too little too late, I’m expecting to lose my most attractive physical traits will all fade sooner than later, just aging naturally.
I often say, that I only regret two things in life:
Not having more kids (only have 2, they are 7 years apart, I would love to have like 3 more kids in that period).
Second is getting a tattoo. I got it because I wanted to be "unique". I still enjoy being unique, that's why I regret it now.
I regret not publicly proclaiming my love for people and their talents. I've always held back on expressing how much I appreciate others and I regret every time I do so. There is no friendship like a friendship where two people earnestly love and respect each other intellectually and creatively.
I regret taking antibiotics for years in high school as a treatment for acne. We just did what the doctor recommended without giving it much thought. My gut has been a mess ever since and it really impacted my quality of life during the “healthiest” years of my life.
My past formed me into who I am today, and I am proud of who I am today. Do I wish I had done some things differently? Of course! That's a sign of growth.
My advice? Stop living in the past. Your car's windscreen is 100x bigger than the rear view mirror for a reason.
No real regrets here. Sure, there are peers that are doing better and have more prestigious jobs, which I envy, but I chose the path I did to have a stable life. Hopefully my kids can take more risks knowing that they have a solid safety net
Be very careful with who you shack up with. Don't settle for partners that mess you around or manipulate you. Make sure you take precautions. The last thing you want is to have a baby with someone who isn't a good person.
Not spending more time my parents and grandparents when they were older.
You get busy with your own life and they never made me feel guilty for not visiting, but this is something that would have benefited me as much as them. I could have done better.
Instead of investing $2000+ in BTC in 2012, I decided to pre-order a miner. It arrived a year late, and it sat in the box for another year. When I finally got around to setting it up, it mined for about 6 days and overheated.
Look up "Amor Fati". Regret is not an acceptable approach to life. You can only love what you've done so far. Obviously you can not change anything from the past so regret does not provide any value.
None. Some moments are tough and I may have acted in the most naive way but those moments have really shaped the guy that I am right now. It sucks but those are my best moves forward.
You’d expect me to say my 14 year marriage that ended last year, but without that marriage I wouldn’t have my son. My only regrets are not spending more time with him, which I’m making up for right now.
I should study and gain lots of (Microsoft) certificates, but i hate classes and study books so much. I taught myself using Debian by being interested and tinkering with it, which is so much better.
When younger, trying to pass out, run away, reset. Instead should have simply eat better, hydrate, exercise and have sex with girls. Would have made much more constructive decisions and choices...
I should have taken Scott Hassan up on his offer to be a very early eGroups employee. I’m perfectly happy with my life so it’s not a huge regret, but I’ll always wonder.
Nothing. Free will doesn’t exist so I just accept what comes my way and naively trust the universe not to be too much of a d$&#. Hopefully that gets me to the finish line.
I legitimately do not understand the philosophical exercise of 'free will doesn't exist'.
Yes it does. I could walk into the street right now. I could walk into the office next door and slap a co-worker. I could learn German. I could leave my life and walk to China.
What is your justification that free-will doesn't exist? Other than biological needs like eating and sleeping, I have control over the rest. Or, rather, I have control over how shitty the rest is. I have yet to hear an argument that has swayed me at all.
What you do and think is exclusively dictated by the input of information going into your brain coming from perception encoded as electrons and ions flowing through the atoms consisting of your neurons. If someone had a printout of the small sub-manifold of spacetime that is you they could read out everything you ever thought and did and it would all make sense (meaning, follow from Schrodinger’s equation). You have no choice and you cannot defy physics. Even if you run into the street, it was so decreed, because you were deterministically ordained to be contemplating free will and attempt to violate it with a “random” action, which in conjunction with the random seed you have chosen (the current state of your neural ion flows) led you to deterministically run into the street. With, as always, a perfect causal pathway and explanation — no matter how free and random it seems. What you do next, always, is decided exclusively by what in the universe happened just before, and no other auxiliary or theological inputs.
The statement “free will does not exist” does not imply the world isn’t Minecraft. It is. Arbitrary actions allowed by physics are indeed allowed. The problem is unpacking that you can do what you want. It is the act and nature of wanting that is also fully constrained by physics. There is no “you” and no “want,” no notion of choice that isn’t simply isomorphic to doing the basic math of quantum mechanics and molecular biology… you are “merely” math executing in time and space, and you are and shall never be nothing more.
https://secularsolstice.github.io/speeches/gen/Nothing_Is_Me...
Free will is a way to describe the macroscopic behavior of human beings, analogous to how we talk about temperature rather than listing the position and velocity of every molecule of air in a room.
I'm not convinced that free will doesn't exist for others, just myself. There seem to be people who can build their lives exactly as they want it, and maybe you are one of those, but they are the minority. Sounds like you are someone that is completely happy with the aspects of their life they can control because they are able to do exactly what they want when they want (get out of bed on time, learn a language when they want, focus exactly as they want when they want, etc). Or, maybe you are someone that just thinks they have free will by making excuses that they really want what they actually get. Don't know you well enough!
I am someone for whom the two universes are the same. I freely choose to act exactly in accordance with how I would act if I were steered by neurons and atoms, and neurons and atoms alone. And that is also the truth, so I am perfectly happy. The universe with and without free will, to me, is metaphysically identical - because of how I have chosen to live and be happy.
Yeah, I'm really having a tough time believing in free will anymore. Sure seems like we're just along for the ride - consciousness without free will, what a combo!
Whether free will exists or not, relative to you it does. You can hit yourself in the leg with a hammer right now, or you can choose not to, and the result will affect the rest of your day. Just because the choice is physically predetermined doesn’t make it any less real to you.
Every mistake is an experience that makes you a unique person and helps you know who you are. I have friends who regretted leaving China and went back, only to find the grass is always greener on the other side.
I paid full tuition in my course to get
some understanding of people.
Dad had some understanding, and Mom was
really good at it, but neither tried very
hard to teach me.
In particular:
[i] Boys and girls, men and women are very
different.
(A) The cliche that boys pay attention to
things and girls, to people is not fully
true but significantly often is true.
(B) Once from a real expert I got a flat
statement: "Of COURSE, women are MUCH
more emotional than men. That is the
cause of all the problems.". That
answered a lot of questions!
(C) A large fraction of girls and women tend
to be afraid -- the list is long with some
standard items and some more. One of the
more important things a boy/man can do is
make it really clear to the female that
they are at zero risk with him.
(D) Generally girls/women are exposed to some
means of manipulation, and some of them
get good at it -- boys/men need to watch
out for that.
(E) Some girls are afraid of being in love
(there is a lot to understanding love, and
I can't cover all of it here) but, still,
are very interested in sex. For them,
holding hands can be more intimate than
sexual intercourse. Boys/men need to
realize that.
[ii] A surprisingly large fraction of
people are in some significant ways
seriously mixed up. So, watch out for
that. Also have a list of common ways and
watch out for those.
(2) Business
It took me way too long to understand the
importance of business, even just
small/medium business, as a path to being
financially responsible and maybe even
secure.
In particular, for a good job in the
economy as an employee, there has to be up
there somewhere some person(s) who did
well enough in business to have created
that job.
So, being an employee is limited by the
jobs other people create. It is better to
be the person who is successful enough in
business to create good jobs.
E.g., at one time I had a relatively
good career going as just an employee in
computing. Then (A) I didn't appreciate
how that career would have to change or
how to make that career a lot better,
e.g., by starting a business or being such
a good employee that I could get stock in
a growing company. (B) To be better
qualified as an employee, I got a Ph.D. in
pure/applied math. I didn't appreciate
that in fact, in reality, in the US, a
Ph.D. is intended for people who want to
be devoted to an academic career and put
up with being, in my view, financially
irresponsible. I had zero interest in
being a professor.
The academic work and my independent study
are crucial parts of my startup, but the
Ph.D. was a very inefficient way to get
some help on some of the parts. I
conclude that, generally, a Ph.D. is more
trouble than it is worth and financially
irresponsible. Learning can be important,
but a Ph.D. is an inefficient way to do
it.
(3) Stock
At one time the founder, CEO of FedEx told
me
"You know, if you stay you are in line for
$500,000 in FedEx stock."
I was holding a really good hand but
didn't know enough to play it at all well.
I didn't stay.
My father understood even less than I did.
Mom, didn't have a clue.
(4) Art
In high school and through college, the
teaching kept trying to get me to pay
attention to art, especially literature.
I didn't see the value. And the lessons
in literature were not very credible, that
is, I could not trust that they would
really be true, say, like Newton's Second
Law.
For art, I like the definition --
"The communication, interpretation of
human experience, emotion."
With that definition, okay -- via art can
get some views of examples of the
experiences, emotions of other people.
Maybe sometimes the examples do illustrate
something about a lot of people and not
just some one.
With that definition, I might have paid a
little more attention to literature and
gotten a little value from it.
Being successful with people is CRUCIAL,
and understanding their possible
experiences, emotions can be important for
the success.
For me and art, I liked music a lot right
away, some before I was 5. Explaining just
why took me a while!
(5) Jobs and Marriage
Apparently some of the prosperity of the
US now is due to having a lot of women
working.
A lot of career paths require moving
frequently. But those moves can play
havoc with a marriage having two jobs.
And with only one job, it can be tough
financially to buy a house and do well
supporting the family.
Lesson: A career that does not require
moving has a big advantage in being
financially secure and doing well
supporting a family.
So, if you want to pursue a career that
has you move or be in some really
expensive place to live, then consider
delaying getting married.
(6) Gossip
In an office, and maybe in much of a life,
gossip can be a threat.
In an office, if you do well, then others
can feel threatened and attack you with
gossip.
So, apparently it is not enough to assume
you are innocent until proven guilty and
instead need positively to assert
innocence on likely gossip accusations.
I'm no expert on how to defend against
gossip, finding a good expert could be
important, but I'm sure that gossip
commonly is a threat. So, watch out for
gossip. If it appears you have been
attacked by gossip, then (ask an expert)
do defend yourself.
> [i] Boys and girls, men and women are very different.
People are different, splitting people up into two groups generally doesn't help anything. The vast majority of your life will be spent dealing with individuals, not groups. Don't treat individuals like any of their groups.
> (A) The cliche that boys pay attention to things and girls, to people is not fully true but significantly often is true.
I have found nothing of significance in my life due to this purported "fact". People are people. Look at the individual, not the group.
> (B) Once from a real expert I got a flat statement: "Of COURSE, women are MUCH more emotional than men. That is the cause of all the problems.". That answered a lot of questions!
Uninteresting. Maybe you are less emotional. Maybe the people you dated were more emotional. If that is a problem, seek out less emotional people to date. There are plenty. More importantly, find someone that makes you feel good, regardless of any insipid advice about "women".
> (C) A large fraction of girls and women tend to be afraid -- the list is long with some standard items and some more. One of the more important things a boy/man can do is make it really clear to the female that they are at zero risk with him.
You should do this with anyone.
> (D) Generally girls/women are exposed to some means of manipulation, and some of them get good at it -- boys/men need to watch out for that.
Men manipulate just as much as women. Again, look to the individual. Stop thinking in terms of men vs women. Find someone that isn't manipulative.
> (E) Some girls are afraid of being in love (there is a lot to understanding love, and I can't cover all of it here) but, still, are very interested in sex. For them, holding hands can be more intimate than sexual intercourse. Boys/men need to realize that.
Take the gender out of this statement and it is an interesting one.
> [ii] A surprisingly large fraction of people are in some significant ways seriously mixed up. So, watch out for that. Also have a list of common ways and watch out for those.
See, great statement, absolutely decent advice because you kept gender out of it. Although it does sound too jaded. I'd rather state it as, "people struggle with life, understand a person's struggles and make sure you can handle them before becoming too deeply involved with them, not just romantically, but platonically, too."
Your remarks about my post have to do with
females, that is gender. Today that is a
touchy, sensitive, politicized subject.
You seem to be saying that, in dealing
with people, should get more information.
In a sense, you are correct: That sense
is from applications of the Radon-Nikodym
theorem. The charming proof by J. von
Neumann is in the W. Rudin Real and
Complex Analysis.
In practice, not really: What I mentioned
and you object to can be called
generalities. Sooooo, in the
politically correct world, those are
called, say, stereotypes and are
offensive.
So, it appears that you see the
generalities as drawing some detailed
conclusions about someone based just on
the generalities. Instead, you want to
hold off on the details until there is
good evidence one detail and person at a
time.
That won't, can't, work very well.
E.g, you are coaching a girl's basketball
team. Some of the girls are not doing
well. You don't know why, and they are
not clearly, explicitly, frankly, honestly
telling you why -- such reluctance is
common. Soooo, you have to guess. You
start with, they are girls, girls tend to
be emotional, in particular, afraid. So,
try that diagnosis.
Uh, in US society, women get be afraid.
Men don't.
You are coaching a boy's basketball team.
One of the boys is not doing well. If you
even hint that you suspect he is overly
emotional, afraid, you would be calling
him a "sissy". All the other boys on the
team would howl with contempt, point
fingers, bend over with laughter. So you
don't do that. You assume he has left his
emotions of fear in the locker room and is
willing to guard Michael Jordan or foul
LeBron James, even if Jordan fakes him
into the nickel seats or LeBron knocks him
there. Afraid? A boy on a round ball
team? NO WAY.
In WWII and the battle of Midway, the US
sent fighter planes, torpedo planes, and
dive bomber planes to attack the Japanese
carriers. Of course, the Japanese had
fighter planes in the air to protect the
carriers. Well, the US planes were poor
on coordination, and the torpedo planes
attacked with the rest of the US planes
still on the way. Well, it would look
like the torpedo planes had no chance.
And in fact, they didn't have a chance;
not even one torpedo hit, and all the
torpedo planes were shot down. The US
torpedo plane pilots knew they were likely
to be shot down, but they flew in anyway.
Fear? No room for fear.
Sure, some women can also overcome fear,
but they are usually not expected to and
still usually don't.
Did I mention, boys and girls are
different.
It appears that you want to set aside
generalities and assume that the girls are
not afraid until it is clear they are or
that the boys are afraid until it is clear
they are not.
But this clear information you want, and I
agree would be good to have, mostly won't
be available.
You want to ignore the generalities. But
the generalities are from decades of
careful observation and have too much good
information to discard, especially when
the detailed information you want is not
available.
What I posted is what was requested, what
I wish I'd had in my experience.
I'm not trying to get into current
politically correct gender equality
arguments. Instead, I was describing what
I wish I had known.
What I listed that I wished I'd known was
important. A lot of the wishing that you
responded to was about love, and that is a
challenging subject.
E.g., not knowing what I listed I wished
I'd known cost me the relationship with
the prettiest human female I ever saw, in
person or otherwise. And she was terrific
in nearly all respects otherwise. Later I
discovered by improbable accident that she
really loved me. For me, I still have her
high school graduation picture in the UR
corner of my computer screen -- I'm still
in love with her. That was a failure. I
believe that had I known what I wish I had
known, I could have saved the
relationship, likely had a really good
marriage, etc. We would have done well
with children: I like children, and she
was way over the top in adoring children,
especially the faces of children, say,
under the age of 5.
E.g., my marriage (to another female) was
a failure. Had I known what I listed I
wish I'd known, I could have either
avoided the marriage or saved it. She was
quite sick. Visiting her mother on her
family farm, she was missing and her body
was found floating in a lake, an apparent
suicide. Did I mention failure?
So, both of those females were afraid.
Did I mention that I wish I'd understood
that females tend to be afraid?
For this subject of fear, I will remind
you of a 101 level of a little of it: In
now some old and relatively solid clinical
psychology, fear is called anxiety and
tends to bring paranoia, hysteria, and
obsessive-compulsive (OCD),
psychopathic-passive behavior. Soooo, if
see a lot of symptoms of anxiety (fear, as
my quite perceptive Mom, after only 15
minutes, put it, "afraid of her own
shadow"), look also for the rest. Your
approach fails here -- you are asking
everyone to rediscover 100 years of
clinical psychology one detail and one
person at a time. Then, the anxiety
tends to bring stress, and the stress
tends to bring depression. The depression
lowers productivity and can, thus, can
bring more stress. The extra stress can
lead to clinical depression which is
dangerous -- can cause suicide. And that
is EXACTLY what happened. It is just
CRUCIAL for someone to understand this 101
level of clinical psychology.
Just what she was afraid of, a detail you
would insist on, she would never say, in
decades, never say or hint, and would
prefer to go to her death than say. Did I
mention that some of the details you want
won't be available?
And why this 101 clinical psychology
mostly for women? Did I mention, women
are much more emotional than men? And
more afraid?
You want to discard the generalities.
Soooo, you discard the information the
generalities imply and want to get that
information one detail and one person at a
time. E.g., you see an anxiety case but
want to discard that, from enormous
evidence, the generalities say that the
anxiety can lead to OCD, stress,
depression, clinical depression, and
death. Okay, now that they are dead, you
have your detailed information. Of
course, you have the information too late.
If we're talking gender and essential truths about behavior here, then as one dude to another I honestly have to tell you that:
> For me, I still have her high school graduation picture in the UR corner of my computer screen -- I'm still in love with her. That was a failure. I believe that had I known what I wish I had known, I could have saved the relationship, likely had a really good marriage, etc. We would have done well with children:
I have been writing fiction for as long as I could hold a pen and always wanted to be a writer. But then computers happened and getting an interesting job was as easy for me as snapping my fingers.
In my early thirties I realized that unless I did something drastic, I was never going to be a writer. So I enrolled in a four year creative writing course. (Creative writing is not routinely taught in college here.) The place had a tough selection policy and was run by established writers with editors and publishers. It is probably the best place in my country to build a network and get noticed.
I did get indeed noticed and published a few short stories in a reputable magazine. Then the publisher (which is one of the most prestigious in the country) had a sit-down with me and told me they really liked my work but they wanted to see something more substantial, which is thinly veiled code for a novel. It was a come-on as big as they come in the literary world. And I fucked it up. I never took them up on their offer. I did not even try and write that book.
After a while my contacts dried up and the window of opportunity closed. Nowadays when I send something to that particular publisher it ends up in the slush pile of uninvited manuscripts (of which they receive over a thousand yearly). I don't blame them, but I do regret it.
not cashing out in time this March before market took a hit. I lost years of investment gains (down 80%) and honestly feel hopeless if I can ever recover.
Going to try and repost this comment because from what I can tell it was shadow banned, maybe for use of a word that triggered a filter?
Most of these I have made peace with and addressed in my life now, but historically, these have been my biggest regrets:
Becoming addicted to prngrfy and mstrbtion in my early teens and staying addicted throughout my 20s. I have been sober for years now, and for me, it was only possible through working the SLAA[1] program. I never actually knew it existed until a therapist suggested it to me; I wish it had been easier to find, but unfortunately whenever I would search for resources in overcoming prngrphy addiction, I would only ever really find places like the big sub with "astronauts".
On the one hand, I have spent more than half of my life addicted to prngrfy. On the other hand, I now have the gift of potentially being able to spend more than half of my time on this earth sober. The glass is definitely half full for me on this one.
Not learning how to dance until my 30s. I was once made fun of for dancing at a party as a young child (<5yo maybe) by my mother and a friend of hers, and that led to me being completely terrified of dancing until last year. I would get very angry and ashamed whenever I was in a situation where dancing was involved, and just generally feel not-good and attacked whenever somebody who loved me wanted to dance with me. I picked up swing dancing last year and now dancing is one of the most joyous activities in my life, and you can usually find me out cutting a rug on a Wednesday night.[2]
Being a lousy big brother to my one younger brother. This one probably hurts me the most and I still have not been able to forgive myself for it. Funnily enough, my younger brother loves me very much and we have a good relationship now, but when I think about all the ways I failed him when we were younger I just lose it emotionally. Working on this in therapy currently.
Not taking care of my body in my teenage years and 20s, and especially wasting all that free extra T[3] when I was going through puberty. I wish I could go back in time and drag myself to the gym when I first hit puberty! I do a wide range of physical activities now including lifting and I have a body and the kind of mass I never would have dreamed of before, but sometimes I like to imagine what I would have looked like now if I had started 20 years ago. Oh well, I can always see what I look like in 20 years' time!
[1]: My stubborn younger self would have written this due to the vaguely religious overtones of the 12 steps, but I'm glad that as a still-non-religious adult I was able to get out of my own way on this one and just focus on doing what I needed to do to get better
[2]: This is also how I found probably my most important adult friend group after the age of 30!
[3]: I will probably hop on TRT when I'm older and my T levels go down, so maybe I will get to experience something like that later in my life after all
There are conflicting studies around this, but even for the ones that do show an increase, it is absolutely minuscule compared to actual TRT. There is no reasonable natural solutions for overcoming low testosterone symptoms.
Yeah, my previous comment definitely doesn't show up on my profile or on this thread when I try to view it on both this submission and my profile in a logged-out state.
dang: I think this is because I used the full "p" word in my initial post, can you confirm?
Thanks for letting me know! I think it may have gotten stuck in a filter queue for manual approval. It would be nice to know exactly what triggered the filter so that I can avoid it in the future
I gave PagerDuty a $100k discount on my market rate in exchange for 2% of stock.
The week I got fired, I had just taken us to AWS Re:Invent and helped sign a lot of business.
During this conference, a gross creeper named Jedidiah Smith (really) from Linode/Foursquare, started sexually harassing and stalking our Office Admin who had come to help with the conference. Our child of a CTO wouldn't do anything about it, so I took matters into my own hands and had him fired, because his boss was a friend and former customer of mine. This made my boss feel impotent, knowing I acted like a man, and he acted like a coward. A man protects his people at all costs. A coward drinks whisky and hobnobs while a potential rapist threatens his people.
( True story, when Moira of the Apache Foundation killed herself, Jed was considered to have shared some of the blame for his constant harassment over her for having been raped, and for being trans. When I still had LinkedIn, he stalked me every 3 days terrified I would do something to him. )
During the conference, AWS us-east-1 went out, and I was blamed for PD's shitty single-AZ, single-region infrastructure, even though 110% of my work had been marketing at that point, and I had not really done anything technical. The founders were to blame for every shitty technical decision they had made, but I was the oldest person in the company, and the easiest scapegoat because I wasn't a young techbro (I was 30, they were 24).
On the flight home to San Francisco my father died. When I arrived at the office that afternoon I was fired. No stock, no severance, just "we locked you out, give us your laptop, fuck you". I was fired and paid a half day's pay for that week.
Working for pagerduty was the worst mistake of my life. I was still idealistic and happy when I first started there. I loved the project. I thought we were going to take over the world. They became billionaires, I became homeless. My stock would be worth like $100m now. For a while I lived on the roof of Pagerduty's office. It's easy to walk by the security guard, the view is stunning, and it's really warm in the loft up above the elevator shaft.
The last picture of my father, he was wearing a PagerDuty shirt he had just received. On the way to bury him, my brother in law and closest friend in this world died of an accidental oxycotin overdose due to a surgery. Boy didn't even take aspirin until his achilles tendon snapped, first week of painkillers he died. Just like that. Poof. Living consciousness to dead meat in a box. My grandfather and mother all died within a year of that.
I fell into a hopeless depression, tried to kill myself several times, spent the next year and a half in a drug-fueled haze.
When I woke up, I was living in a stolen RV, my fiancee had left me, all of my friends had ghosted me, my family had disowned me, I'd been arrested three times and was over $75k in debt. I decided to nullify my life.
Cynicism and nihilism is my life's philosophy. For the past 11 years I have only slept with women I paid, so that I don't need to have any attachment. I have no ties, no responsibilities, no connections.
I lie to people about my name if I socialize so that I never have to engage with the same person more than once. If I do accidentally connect with the same person twice, I decide it's time to move on, which happens every 2-4 months. I've moved about 50 times, if you can call drifting "moving". Digital nomadding, I dunno, whatever.
I own three motorcycles, (all R1250RTs) the one I'm on now, one in London and one in Mexico City I imagine has long-since been stolen. I have a backpack, a hand drum, a laptop, a few burner phones, about 50 sim cards, a wallet, a two pairs of custom hiking shoes, a week's worth of hiking clothes and a couple of Neal Stephenson books. Also, some antacids, i have the worst acid reflux.
I carry my Do Not Resuscitate on me, I have not had a social media account of any type for 10 years. My real identity is long lost, sometimes I refer to myself by one of my fake identities so much I start believing them. My passports and IDs are all fake, and I'm happy being anonymous. I've managed to squirrel away a few hundred thousand dollars in cash and gold in storage lockers in my favorite cities. No crypto, I prefer pure anonymity. Before I die I'll collect it all and give it away to homeless people.
I like sitting with bums, drug-dealers, hookers and junkies. They're honest, they accept me for who I am and never ask me questions I don't want to answer, and I never ask them any either. The closest I come to having friends is knowing drug dealers by name in 20 or so countries. When I come to a new city, I walk around looking for the thugs, make a deal, hand them a beer and talk to them for a bit. I haven't actually done drugs in 5 or 6 years, besides cannabis and acid, I just like talking to real people and there ain't nobody realer than a hustler. My old man was a hell's angel, I prefer lowlifes to the rich.
I left tech for a while, made a pile by selling coke, heroin and mdma to yuppy tech bros, many, many of whom worked for YCombinator companies. Let's just say I know where a lot of bodies are buried. If I wrote a tell-all book, I could run the lives and reputations of at least 20 names you recognize very well. Don't worry, I am an animal with integrity when it comes to secrets.
Within a few years I will be breathing through an oxygen tank because of congenital emphysema, and a few years after that I'll be dead. This is my remaining comfort, this knowledge of my mortality is strangely very comforting.
The series of events which began with PagerDuty nullified my life. I hold only bitterness and hatred for my peers, my colleagues, my employers and my customers, and each and every one of you on this site. To me, you are prey, somebody to rob or jump for fun. Don't worry, if I jump you, I won't keep your wallet, I'll give it to the first bum I see. I'm too old for that now anyways, my lungs are failing.
My last ~20 employers never knew my real name. I have a few people I hire off of UpWork to be my references when I need a new gig.
I have no social media presence, no saved e-mails, no photos, no papers, no property. Just the bare essentials to survive and to keep moving, I'm like a shark, always gotta keep moving.
I don't exist.
For those of you who are familiar with GG Allin, he defined who I became after PagerDuty with more eloquence than I ever could.
"Everybody knows that I'm a scumbag
They won't come and see me in this dive
Everyone's afraid of what might happen to them
Or if they'll even get out of there alive
Some fuckhead in the corner is getting to me
Talkin' about the way I look and smell
Well I guess he don't know that I'm the Outlaw Scumfuck
Someone aughta' warn him before I knock him straight to Hell
Because everybody knows that I'm a scumbag
I like sluts and whores and I don't care
You can say just what you want to say about me
But if I hear you I might just go knock you off your chair'
Cause I like to drink whiskey by the gallon
I live on peanut butter sandwiches, I don't care
I spent some nights in jail in this old country
Everybody hates me and I just don't fucking care"
Maybe I am in a nostalgic / sad mood but your thread is inspiring me.
As many stated, I don't regret much, it pretty much doesn't belong to my vocabulary. I have made choices with a state of mind, a state of knowledge and a context that explains them. Now I have matured, relieving a moment with 40 years more of experience is not available on the market.
Though this thread could be a trigger for some people in similar moment of their lives.
A few keys things that define me, why they are not purely made of happy consequences, why they also had to happen.
Relationship: my first relationship lasted a super long time. My now ex is a good friend. Though I feel I have skipped on some of my fun time, and I actually broke up because I had to drink from this carpe diem cup. We are still friends, it doesn't help with whatever relationships come after. It feels I am a bit living my life backward. But at that time, this person was the first one that made me feel good / worth loving. And I think that she enabled me to achieve a pretty good high school / university time ... I think I wouldn't have been able to hold without her.
Self knowledge: unfortunately when I read about all your abusive relationships I am scared I am the asshole in them. Anger issues, obsessiveness, no violence but I definitely brought down people I loved in discussions in the past. I have spent a lot of time depressed without knowing it. It took me a shitload of time to aknowledge it and claw back. My key elements have been: doing sport and having a rythm were going to bed at 1am for work everynight is not ok. Seeking help was also a smart thing to do. It took me a shitload of time to figure that. I have destroyed my second relationship by letting work putting me on edge all the time. Positive spin: I think I am decently good at my I do, I think I overinvested but got some payback in skills. I am still struggling with anger issues and not beeing a dick...
Work: younger, someone close in my family told me "go work for a big company you have all the time in the world to start something it will give you money and credentials". I didn't, because nobody in my family really hit the jackpot starting to work for a big one, because not the same times, not the same social background. I had constructed a logic to explain why I would be better starting my own stuffasap. And starting a company in a country that doesn't value risk, has no investors, no mentors... I basically failed for ten years on different projects. Damn I must be somehow resilient or loving the loser game. It was tough, I think that's one of the thing that brought me down (above paragraph), me and my business partner. And I keep seeing this guy I know, he did an internship for a major company, and everytime I hear about him and his projects "he must be good, he has been at X". Now I think I am at a quarter of where I thought I would be at 23 when I was 20, but I have a company that works well and I have learnt a shit load.
Most of these I have made peace with and addressed in my life now, but historically, these have been my biggest regrets:
Becoming addicted to pornography and masturbation in my early teens and staying addicted throughout my 20s. I have been sober for years now, and for me, it was only possible through working the SLAA[1] program. I never actually knew it existed until a therapist suggested it to me; I wish it had been easier to find, but unfortunately whenever I would search for resources in overcoming pornography addiction, I would only ever really find places like r/NoFap.
On the one hand, I have spent more than half of my life addicted to pornography. On the other hand, I now have the gift of potentially being able to spend more than half of my time on this earth sober. The glass is definitely half full for me on this one.
Not learning how to dance until my 30s. I was once made fun of for dancing at a party as a young child (<5yo maybe) by my mother and a friend of hers, and that led to me being completely terrified of dancing until last year. I would get very angry and ashamed whenever I was in a situation where dancing was involved, and just generally feel not-good and attacked whenever somebody who loved me wanted to dance with me. I picked up swing dancing last year and now dancing is one of the most joyous activities in my life, and you can usually find me out cutting a rug on a Wednesday night.[2]
Being a lousy big brother to my one younger brother. This one probably hurts me the most and I still have not been able to forgive myself for it. Funnily enough, my younger brother loves me very much and we have a good relationship now, but when I think about all the ways I failed him when we were younger I just lose it emotionally. Working on this in therapy currently.
Not taking care of my body in my teenage years and 20s, and especially wasting all that free extra T[3] when I was going through puberty. I wish I could go back in time and drag myself to the gym when I first hit puberty! I do a wide range of physical activities now including lifting and I have a body and the kind of mass I never would have dreamed of before, but sometimes I like to imagine what I would have looked like now if I had started 20 years ago. Oh well, I can always see what I look like in 20 years' time!
[1]: My stubborn younger self would have written this due to the vaguely religious overtones of the 12 steps, but I'm glad that as a still-non-religious adult I was able to get out of my own way on this one and just focus on doing what I needed to do to get better
[2]: This is also how I found probably my most important adult friend group after the age of 30!
[3]: I will probably hop on TRT when I'm older and my T levels go down, so maybe I will get to experience something like that later in my life after all
i fully agree. i had my kids late and i am almost fifty now. i am not regretting having kids so late, but i feel much better than i thought i would feel at that age. and that's what got me thinking that having kids earlier would mean we'd now be independent and, given the higher income would be able to do a lot more interesting things than i was able to earlier. again. i have no regrets, especially because i was able to travel and live in many different places before i got married, much more than the average person, which i would not have been able to do, had i married and gotten kids earlier. so it's a tradeoff, but it's something well worth considering. just make sure you have a partner that shares your motivations.
Years ago, I was suffering from painful defecation, had mucus and blood come out. I always thought it would get better by just eating healthier or whatever. Never even thought about visiting a doctor. When I finally went, the doctor tested my butt for STDs and what a surprise, it was chlamydia. A round of doxycyclin quickly got rid of the chlamydia, but the damage they did lead to a (peri?)anal abscess, which turned into a fistula. I had a surgery to implant a little "piercing ring" into the abscess, so it could drain and stay drained. Had it in for a few months. Then I had a second surgery to split it.
The pain from the abcess/fistula and the two surgeries was unimaginable. Long after the second surgery, I still suffer from bouts of pain, some weeks it's gone and some weeks it's so bad, I can barely work. If the pain is there, none but the strongest of pain killers and illicit drugs will stop it. When it's especially bad, I visit a proctologist, but they all say there is nothing wrong and it's post surgical pain we can do nothing about. I kept my stool continency by the way, but sometimes I can't hold my farts now.
So, chlamydia. Extremely easy to treat and practically harmless if you discover it early. My regret is that I didn't go to the doctor sooner.
The fun continued when I got, you wouldn't believe it, monkey pox up my butt! You know those famous monkey pox sores? I had less than 10 small, harmless ones on my body, but the inside of my rectum became a bubble waffle. Doctors believe you get the strongest outbreak of them at the place where you caught them, e.g. face/mouth/throat, penis or butt. I had to take sleeping pills for 2 weeks to keep functioning. Getting off of those is very, very hard. My doctor told me he had someone with monkeypox up their urethra and that guy got catheterized for a week because he couldn't piss from pain. As a bonus, the monkeypox also gave me myocarditis. I am still healing from the sores up my butt, 2 months after I could leave quarantine. I will have an MRI of the heart in a month.
I am dumb and unlucky and yet still I deserve this because I just can't stop having casual sex with strangers.
Text length has been limited and I am fed up with STDs, -100% absolute bias for all stds I can think off, the usage of the words „butt“, „penis“ and „casual sex“ will also be mostly reduced.
I've never met someone that I care about the way I cared about her. Huge what if.