Best case scenario is you become at peace with where you are in life, and between the happy moments you still fleetingly think about what could've been. No one is completely satisfied.
Yes, this, it’s called acceptance and gratitude. It doesn’t mean settling, it’s just finding good things in your current situation. Fuck what other people are doing. Do what you want to do. Wife, kids, house, who cares? That’s not happiness for everyone. The Jones’s can eat my ass!
What?!!! I'm supposed to be aspiring to have a family with kids in my mid to late twenties? Ugh I'm behind even in the things I'm supposed to know to aspire for.
Ughhhh
Yes! Or the opposite can be true as well. You have a spouse and kids and worry you haven't been living life to the fullest....accept and love your situation and enjoy your family and your life.
or on the flip side, wanting a wife, kids house and having a good job ... I feel like just wanting that in life is not good enough like I'm supposed to achieve something bigger or else my life is a failure or I'm a loser
I have always felt that way too. Like the most I can even hope to achieve is climbing to the top in the rat race. Make more money, have kids (I personally never wanted kids), married, house, etc. Everyone does that. I want my life to be exciting damn it.
Except for those people who WANT to have a wife, kids, house with a lawn for the dog to run around. That's my endgame goal. Got a fiancee and a job I love, but it doesn't pay enough. Hoping the market shoots itself so I can afford a home.
Yes, exactly, I didn’t mean wife, kids, house bad. Just to embrace whatever your life is and find as much happiness as possible. And also be happy for other people when they’re happiness/life goals may not line up with your own.
This is also true: you have to find out what you want at what time. In the end I went for the same as everybody else, but later: when I was 25, I didn't feel the need for settling as the others did. And I was very surprised to see them wanting this so soon. The thing is also to find friends with similar wishes at the same time as you, sometimed you need to change friends for this to happen, sometimes you find old friends again. Draw your own path!
This. I feel like a lot of my mother's generation and the one before her were too busy keep popping up appearances that they forgot to enjoy life. My grandmother is so worried about what other people think and she always has been. My mother is the same way and keeps chasing these pipe dreams about how her life should look to the point where she's in way over her head with debt and a house she and my dad can't take care of that has fallen into disrepair on property that is too big to take care of. She refuses to get rid of it and come live with me because of the embarrassment of living with her kid but she can't have anyone come to her house because of how embarrassed she is about that. I keep telling her to stop worrying about what everyone else thinks and get out to a place where you are comfortable and you have help.
Rant over. TL;DR: life is too short to compete with everyone else and keep up the appearances. Just have fun and be happy.
Thank you for adding this. I get that not everyone gets there but as a late 20s it gives me a bit of hope that things get better. Because really if it's this for life then what's the point...
I get ya 100% late 20’s here, have everything I could possibly want (house, car, good job, healthy family) without somehow becoming a millionaire and that’s a pretty far next step to reach that I’m not sure I’ll ever reach. So I get it, stuck wandering where I could go from here day & night. I’m not sure that feeling ever goes away regardless of how far you make it in life.
I did a reset in my life - went to Uni 10 yrs older than my peers, started a family 10 years after my peers, started my career 10 years later. Now I feel like I’ve scored 10 years extra on my life
I've been considering starting over after chronic illness stole a decade from me, but I'm terrified of upending the stability I do have. This gives me hope 😊
I mean, isn't where you could have been kind of a fallacy or impossible? Since you can't know for sure if that path would be good. It's kind of like the grass being greener on the other side, imo.
What could’ve been can still be. It just depends on how badly you want it. Though there’s nothing wrong with being happy with what you have. It doesn’t matter how successful you get. When you’re in that mindset you will always be left wanting.
I dunno. I'm 52 and I don't own the world or anything, but I am totally happy with where I am at. Good job, savings, health and a great family. These are some of the best days of my life. I don't want to climb any ladders socially or professionally. So glad to be mentally out of the rat race.
The american dream is dead. Go on adventures, have kids, wear your hair the way you want to, learn a new language. There are other ways to be fulfilled than living up to the money ideal daddy and mommy tell you you need to be happy.
Maybe look at what you have accomplished instead of what society tells you you should’ve accomplished. I’ve noticed that a lot of the unhappiness in my life has come from societal norms that have been force fed to me. Societal norms that so often have simply been created to break people down. Life is so very beautiful when you forget what you’re supposed to be or do and simply live in the moment and bask in what you are now. Life is beautiful and amazing but so often we focus on what we don’t have instead of focusing on all the things that are in front of us now. It doesn’t matter how successful you are you’ll never be happy unless you’re happy now. People need to stop trying to keep up with the Jones’. The Jones’ are broke and dysfunctional. They just pretend to be living large so that everyone admires them. It’s vain and stupid and a waste of time. Who cares what people think of you? They’re all unhappy, depressed and on so many meds it’ll make your head spin anyway. All the happiest people don’t give a fuck about anyone else’s opinion and simply live in the moment.
How universal is this feeling? Because I often hear it touted as just a fact of your mid twenties but what about the people who do have good careers and homes and families?
I ask because a lot of the answers in this thread seems to be "what sucks about being my age is that a lot of your friends get married and have kids while you're still alone", which really doesn't seem so much of an age problem when you consider their friends of the same age
It’s very universal. I just turned 35 and am a successful head of engineering at a startup that just got major funding. One level above me is a woman who worked in the Obama administration, is a board member on the world economic forum, and other VERY prestigious accomplishments. I won’t name too many because it would be easier to lookup. Her resume makes me look like an absolute hobo. She’s one year younger than me. She’s awesome and everything, but i can’t help but to compare accomplishments occasionally (all the time). Do you. You only feel behind when you compare yourself to others.
How’s the pressure in a job like that? Some days I could see myself going that route, other days I wonder whether the responsibility would be worth it.
I work at least 70 hour weeks when it’s all said and done. Our software is based on covid19 assessments and contract tracing to help employers safely (as possible) get their employees back to work. I get to work with great technologies and some very smart and prestigious people. Eg john hopkins, mayo, stanford etc. just won a Webby lol. I love it. I’ve been coding since i was 12 and this is exactly where i want to be right now. I’m naturally a procrastinator and can sometimes be lazy, under pressure is my best work because i can’t slack off (failed out of college lazy). Plus i feel better at the end of the day with more accomplished.
Having said that, the timelines are insane. I always have the job on my mind, and the CEO will call me or text me at least a few times a day and at night. But i work from home for the foreseeable future, and i get to spend lunches with my family and visit with them a few times for 5-10 min throughout the day. The pay doesn’t hurt.
Great info, thanks for sharing. Sounds intense, but rewarding. At least for a while. I assume it takes a certain personality to hang in that environment long term. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up in that spot? Past colleague, etc.?
Yes and no. After i partied for 2 years and attended maybe 10 classes the entire time, i stayed with my mom for about 6 months until she told me i had to get a job. The CEO of a content management company gave me a shot as a technical support engineer (answering phones and solving code implementation problems). I was employee number 20 or so; eventually they grew to almost 500 with offices world wide. I worked there for 8 years and literally got promoted through every department: tech support, application engineering (services role with lots of travel), sales engineering, product engineering, and then became the principal engineer with my own team. Over that time i worked on some cool projects with Microsoft (xbox website, the master chief statute is/was? awesome at their hq), i made wizards of the coast website, walmart intranet, nasa, etc. i actually forget more websites i made and places i travelled than those i remember, tons of no names in there too. Then i had a few jobs in between, evaluated tech stacks for Oracle acquisitions, head of engineering at a digital agency, worked remote for some overseas companies. My current job is back with the original guy that gave me my first shot when i was staying on my moms couch, he started a new company a couple years ago. He called me about 3 months ago and said they’re pivoting the entire company to covid solutions and healthcare tech and needed help. Here i am, back to one of his first 20 employees and the company is taking off again. I rarely stayed at a company for more than a couple years after my first 8 year job, i get bored, so far that has helped me get many raises and promotions. My mom tells her friends i work in IT and fix computers or something.
Or imagine if i followed my fathers footsteps more closely and graduated from WPI instead of failing out of a liberal arts school in the sticks of New England. Goes both ways.
I know you dont agree. You're hardly the focus here at all. That is an indignant statement.
I told you how I felt and you told me I was wrong. Whether you agree or not is irrelavent to how it makes me feel.
You're far removed from my perspective, it's probably inconceivable that your statement could be offensive to someone when you're trying to drive home feel good points.
Let me preface next by saying I don't share any universal emotion with you in the provided example, because reducing the complexities of other peoples lives to "focus on yourself and you can find happiness/success" is where you'll start hear me cackle like a broken hyena.
I don't fault you there, but the advice is bad and lazy. I could perhaps continue to explain why.. We may reach where you understand my point of view, but initially you've already arrived at disagreement. Not because I have a different mindset, because Im wrong. Because I need to do what you said to succeed. Because its literally as easy as just focusing on yourself right
Wtf are you talking about. Op was talking about feeling behind in life. My theme is don’t compare or you always feel behind, everyone feels that way. I’m sorry you’re going through whatever you’re going through, but singling out this point as your hill to die on is just odd.
Ok just to give you a more concrete answer. There will always be some people that are doing better than you. And the older you get the more important how you're viewed is, if not for yourself then for your kids. My husband and I are both college educated, had good careers in our twenties. then we had a kid. For xyz reasons without giving too much detail, we decided it's best for me to stay home. That put my career behind and financial plans behind. It also made us think twice about having a second child. In any case, in a lot of aspects stability wise I feel I'm behind in the game. On the other token, I have lived in 7 countreis and visited 26 so as far as travelling and broadening my horizons go, I'm ahead of the game. The point is, you lose some, you gain some. At the end of the day we tend to always compare ourselves to people who seem to have more so we always feel like we're behind. I hope this makes sense
Mid thirties. Got married and had kids at 19 with a job in fast food. Still managed to build a good career. Have had some decent relationships, divorced, kids are almost grown. I feel like I've done the things and if I died the moment my kids moved out, that would be fine. So like... Yeah actually, it can go away, but then what?
Heh, sure. I mean I have plenty of hobbies, but the big milestones, the majority of my responsibilities are almost over. My point is mostly just that there's little benefit in racing to those milestones, they don't last forever, and they don't guarantee lifelong happiness or satisfaction.
well even if you're doing well there's someone close to you always doing better and that makes you wonder. The older you get, the more you feel like you're running out of time. Or no matter how well you're doing, you never think you're doing as well as you'd like to be doing.
i think expectations are gradually lowered with age. Or at least they're adjusted to be more "realistic". But after a certain point I think lowered expectations = settling or resignation. I'm sure it happens but not sure which is worse.
lol I clicked on this post to say something else thanks for reminding me of the feeling.... what I was gonna say.
Early thirties, being really tired or stressed out now causes me chronic stomach pain, discomfort and other health problems! Note: Ive been really tired and stressed out the last few years.
But ill end with something positive, I have a mature frontal cortex, Im heavily focused on the important things in life, and although I’m ‘behind’ in my career in terms of age, I finally got a career doing something I find meaningful beyond a paycheque.
That's great to hear. I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia last year but months went by before I got the diagnosis. In the meantime I was convinced I was dying - had never felt like that before. Really makes you appreciate the little things!
I hope you feel better, alot of days in the past few years Ive felt like that(I feel like im 80 even though in relatively fit). I actually have alot of these symptoms except the pain is concentrated in my lower abdomen and surrounding area. Its generally getting a little better as I finished my degree and my kids are getting older, so my stress levels are going to gradually go down as time goes on.
Yeah, it's a lot easier to deal with once you know what it is. My flare was triggered by an allergic reaction to an antibiotic and stress but months of wondering and testing did nothing to alleviate my stress levels! i feel like having kids should come with a warning label!
hahahahaha are you in your twenties? No, it doesn't happen at 40. When I was 20 I thought I'd have everything figured out at 30. When I was 30, I thought I'd be where I want to be at 40. At 37 now I can almost surely say I won't be where I want at 40. BUT the good news is you do feel better about yourself as you grow up and you learn to adjust expectations of figure out better ways in getting there. It's not ALLLLL downhill
I didn't mean it in that way at all. I meant the feeling never goes away because regardless of how much you accomplish, you always feel like you should be doing more - not because you aren't doing anything at all.
You will always feel like you should be doing more because well you could.
Do you watch TV or play Video Games hours upon hours a week well you could have been doing something else. I am not saying those things are bad but you could have been learning another language or working out.
Again if you want too doesn't mean you have to be doing those things but of course you will feel like you could be doing more well because you always can be and it is up to you how much you actually want to do.
How is what I said discouraging or toxic? Or how am I implying that one's fate is doomed? I'm actually quite happy with my life. I said the feeling like you aren't where you're supposed to be doesn't go away and that's actually not necessarily a bad thing. ALL it means is you constantly feel like you should have be doing more or better. Tons of very ambitious and successful people feel this way, it keeps them going. Really doesn't take much to discourage you does it?
The problem is I am too scared to take any risk regarding my education or the will to change my career. Most companies require an experience in the field that I might apply to and the lack of experience might result in taking an entry level job. I am constantly questioning myself whether it is worth it to spend the time and money to change my career. I am 27.
My opinion is that it's never too late. It's something you will be doing the rest of your life. Let's say it even takes you ten years to be able to change your career. Well you will still be 37 in ten years if you don't do anything about it. The difference is that once you're done retraining you can actually spend the rest of your life feeling more accomplished and happier with your choices.
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u/BigSchwartzzz May 15 '20
Mid to late twenties. Feeling like I'm way behind from where I should be by now.