Transitioned
Huge mood
Bought Apple and Microsoft stock.
And google
Said no to my parents more.
Bought Bitcoin or have tried to buy a shoebox of a house.
But I listened to all the “sensible” people and went for a graduate level program instead like an idiot, and then couldn’t do anything with it for a litany of reasons. Just one family emergency or health problem after another.
The worst of all maybe could have been avoided if I hadn’t been off at school in the first place. I don’t regret college, but my education should have stopped there. I was finally an adult, but I still let everyone else dictate my life, right from the getgo.
Biggest regret of my life, right out of the gate.
But I listened to all the “sensible” people and went for a graduate level program instead like an idiot
Oof, yeah similar situation though for me it was more around 20-21. Went to college for about 2-3 years, wasn’t doing too great with the required calculus classes & sort of dropped out. The upside was during that same time I landed a full time job in IT & was getting paid plenty, had a 401k, all that stuff.
But the “sensible” people around me (aka the boomer parents/uncles/etc. with their lifetime pensions) kept telling me to stop working & go back to school. That got into my head & eventually I quit my well paid job, burned another 2-3 years on school before realizing that just wasn’t going to work out for me. Then cashed out my 401k to pay off those school loans… those same “sensible” people didn’t tell me anything about retirement savings & I was too young & dumb to understand that stuff back then.
Nowadays I’m okay & don’t have any debt. But all that essentially meant I started over with my career later in life & am still trying to catch up with retirement savings.
In an alternate timeline I totally should have bought bitcoin when it was memed on and was literally sub pennies. On the other hand, anyone I know with wallets that old either have lost access to them or spent them when they went to a few dollars so likely wouldn’t be any different
Gave a shit about school. Instead I was way too worried about finding that one girl for me. Now I’m dumb, poor, and have the most wonderful wife in the world… after a few false starts.
Wish I had gotten diagnosed with adhd. Earlier would have been better, but really it was college and early 20s where it hurt me the most (ie the period of time where I no longer had my parents managing my calendar, and before my wife and I started divvying up personal and household tasks based on our strengths)
This hits hard. I was 29. My daughter was 3 and my god, I wish I was diagnosed earlier. After that it still took me several years to get a hold of my life.
Skipped years of college that didn’t do me any good and just moved out instead of living with my family for another 4 years.
My drivers license. Now I’m 19 and still need to do it.
I’m 24 and I still don’t have a driver’s licence. I mean, I don’t have a job to begin with, let alone a car.
I’m going to finish school soon and I want to drive a car when I have a job and can afford it. I’ve used public transportation for the past 3 years and will probably still use it in the future when it’s not too inconvenient but a 30 min drive to work taking 1 hour instead, where I spend 30 minutes just waiting, sucks. This weekend I drove to a friend. It would have taken 30 minutes by car but it took me 2 hours with public transport because I had to wait a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes. The issue isn’t public transportation itself but that the government was trying to save as much money as possible and it is getting better with the new government but there is still so much to do and it will take time.
Go to a therapy
Highly recommend
but just one, two therapys or three can cause sunburn
I wish I would have taken relationships less seriously. I started dating people when I was young because I thought it was what everyone was doing but I should have been having fun and goofing around.
Investing in Bitcoin, I suppose, is the other thing. I nearly did it when people were paying multiple Bitcoins for a pizza for the novelty of it but stopped because I couldn’t figure it out at the time.
Kept in touch with friends.
Got back on ADHD meds that my parents took me off as a 10yo as they didn’t like the side effects.
Exercised.
Study, get the certification I ended up getting eventually (that i was repeatedly recommended to do but was too perpetually exhausted to study for), and breaking into IT as a career sooner.
Not waste years 18-22 in a shitty grocery store/fast food job. To this day I can’t stand to look at a rotisserie chicken cooker.
Looked inward and truly considered how my words and actions affected others
I (emotionally) hurt someone I cared about deeply, and it has taken years of work and therapy to begin to move past it
Worry less about grades and academic performance, met my actual therapist back then so I could understand more about myself through exploration of my own self.
Hug my dad more if I knew he would be gone in a few years. Miss him everyday.
Not wasted all the time and actually studied. I am pretty good even at procrastinating starting things I like doing.
Also, when I was 17 one of the better colleges had a yearly competition in networking (specifically with Cisco devices) where people who scored above 56% would get some larger amount of bonus points at that college. Unfortunately, the number of places was limited, so I didn’t want to take anyone’s opportunity away by signing up, as I wasn’t 100% sure I could do it.
In the end, 14 people who signed up didn’t even show up. Fuck that!Perhaps I could try when it will be held next year. Yeah, future tense. I am still 17. But it’s still the same morale problem. Limited number of opportunities. Not everyone can get the chance, perhaps because of me.
I don’t know what to do.
I am not even sure I regret the choice I made. On one hand, I lost an opportunity myself. On the other hand, it feels like I made a right, albeit dumb decision.So yeah, back to the question. I will regret fucking up my life. I know I’ll do just that.
I’m sure there will be more opportunities for you to take advantage of in the future
Gotten on antidepressants immediately after high school. I would have had my shit completely together by the time I graduated from community college and either succeeded in my original field (music recording) or gone to engineering school and finished before the pandemic.