As I get older, I find myself reflecting more on my life experiences to date, and if I should do anything to shake it up a bit. For me, there are three particular areas that I'm becoming more aware of, which I will cover in increasing concern (i.e. best for last). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) I should've achieved more The standard feeling for everyone methinks. You think of the likes of Bill Gates and Elon Musk and think "Why haven't I achieved the same?". I think this one is somewhat easy to quash as there's a couple of nuances on the matter. Firstly, these types of people have a massively skewed work/life balance. Secondly, I don't think for all the money in the world, I would want to be as much of a w*nker as Elon or Bill are. Amongst my friends, I feel I'm middle of the pack. I may not make as much money as some, but I seem to have a bit more personal freedom (mainly because I don't have children to run around after). Also, I look at my work life and realise that the people who probably get paid more don't actually have it much different - sure, they may have a "nicer" car or bigger house, but on the scale of things, there's nothing fundamentally different - everyone has to get up and take a dump in the morning, after all. 2) My time is running out I'm closing in on the big four oh. This means I probably have up to 20-25 years left of decent physical mobility, then after that, things will start to go downhill. All my ancestors never made it much beyond 80. What does this mean? I dunno. Maybe I should fit in some more travelling? Or do something that leaves a mark? Either way, I look back at the hours, days, weeks I may have 'wasted' with regret. For example, playing a game that I'm not particularly enjoying to the end rather than moving onto something else that's a better way to spend time. 3) Is this it? This one may be a little harder to grasp compared to the previous, but it is the one that bugs me the most. As I transitioned from childhood to adulthood, I felt my mind changing to a more mature form, and assumed as I got older, this would continue. But that is not the case! Though I may look older on the outside, internally, there is still the feeling of being that awkward 16 year old I used to be. I think the best way to describe it is a scene from the new Battlestar Galactica* when the priest Cylon character goes off on a rant about how he wants to (paraphrasing) "feel cosmic radiation, taste supernovas". I assumed I would get better at dealing with boring tasks such as dealing with bills and mortgages, but there's always the child side of me screaming to go do something far more fun. It then gets more troubling as you realise that literally everyone around you is in the same boat and you have that thought: "where are all the adults?", I'll tell you now - it's not necessarily the people who dress up smartly and try to put on airs of professionalism - if anything, they're the most delusional. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, just a few thoughts from someone who probably like most others, isn't quite sure where they fit in life. Doesn't mean I'm going to randomly buy a fast car, start dating a woman half my age or anything - I've made peace with getting older, and young people are so irritating anyway . Curious to know how my fellow Bit-Techers are handling life. I'm going to go back to sticking little plastic soldiers together. *Yes, I know, it's old now.
A young whippersnapper, worrying about getting old. if I last as long as my parents and grandparents, at 59 I have up to 18 years left… Just get on with life. Not worth worrying about how much time you have left, it won’t make you live any longer.
I just hit 40 back in September. Used it as a kick up the bum to get a bit healthier, lost ~9kg so far and still have a way to go. I think as an elder millennial we got told as children “you can do anything you like”, “ if you work hard you will get”, “there isn’t anything you can’t achieve” through our formative years. This helped a fraction of our generation become astronauts, marine biologists or leaders in business, those who would previously have been dissuaded based on class, gender or some other trait. It also set an expectation that if you aren’t the winner, best in class or top of your field you have failed. If everyone was an astronaut, marine biologist or CEO then civilisation would end in a week. We need and rely on bus drivers, agricultural pickers and refuse collectors. You can’t put a person on the moon if someone hasn’t made a O-ring in a factory somewhere correctly. We live as part of a massive interconnected society and everyone is valuable as part of that.
I feel ya on all counts. I dealt with the first one much earlier in life, in my late 20s - early 30s, by making peace with who/what I am rather than trying to be what I'm not. I'd argue that it's FAR worse in this day and age when we are drowning in content made by the most irksome and nauseating overachievers on the planet. My solution was to stop exposing myself to said content and instead use my downtime to enjoy--selectively--the content that really sat well with me, and it made a world of difference to my noggin. As for the "IRL" side of the coin, my two best mates are high flyers: one is a consultant Anaesthetist with more brains than you can shake a neurosurgeon at, and the other is a senior manager at Samsung down in London. Again, I'm not them, so I don't need to fit in where they do. Our friendship is classless, which is why it has lasted for almost thirty years (and counting). Also kudos to @Goatee for saying exactly what I was about to write ... Every time I go to Tesco I remind myself that these folks working on (probably) min wage are essential to my way of life, and I to theirs. The less I think about achievement, the happier I am.
****ing this I blame social media. Its created a generation of people who constantly compare themselves to others and go to the extreme for a sense of validation and recognition.
Your mother didn’t use her industry contacts to influence IBM into landing you an extremely lucrative deal. You weren’t born into a relatively wealthy family that owned a stake in a South African emerald mine. Those are the last people in the world I’d want to measure myself against. All the code Elon Musk wrote for PayPal had to be ripped out and rewritten after he was basically paid to leave. It was so bad that it created major vulnerabilities that could be exploited trivially. Bill Gates might have been a talented programmer, but once he landed that IBM contract it was gravy train all the way. Jeff Bezos had to have millions of dollars invested in Amazon by his parents in order to keep the company afloat. These people aren’t technical geniuses, and they certainly didn’t get to where they are now on merit alone.
Interesting post. I just turned 55 and still feel about 12. Have never grown up. Couldn't care less what other people earn. I'm on a decent wage and have worked in the NHS for almost fifteen years. All I know is this, live your life your way, don't live vicariously though others. At the end of it all, family is everything.
One thing I will say, is definitely do things you've always wanted to do that involve any amount of physicality, because that can be ripped from you in an instant. There's me and my ongoing post hernia shenanigans of intermittent horrific pain and general inconvenience, to someone like my mate bons, who was gaming on his pc one day then in the blink of an eye, lost all feeling from his nipples down. Some sort of spinal tumour I think it was. He'll never walk again. Or **** again. The latter probably the more depressing. So definitely make the most of your body while you can. I should have been a microbiologist. I should have been fighting COVID from a lab not a sofa. But I'm not and I didn't, but what I do have is a Mrs who's a total ****ing nobhead and could not make me happier if she tried, but she continues to do so without trying. I wouldn't give that up for anything. There are smaller regrets of job choices or interactions leading to the need for new jobs, but they're by the by. My brother gave me a stern talking to the other month as work had been getting me super depressed, he advised don't care too much. Go in, do job, get paid, that's it, far more important things to worry about, and he's right. I think, the main thing is do what you want and what you feel is right for you at the time. That's all you can do. Oh and make sure to have fun, because if you can't have any fun then what's the point?
I like pocket knives and soft toys, pretty much everyone will look down on one of those. IDGAF. Pete, you sound like you're pretty happy and doing just fine. I'm 36 and on paper I'm doing well, wife, kids, house etc. but the reality of the situation is that kids are stressful AF and I've been having a tough few years. If you're at all on the fence about that heed my warning, it's relentless hard work and you give up loads of freedom. But it sounds like you have no real regrets, and life is working out for you. Could have had a better paid job perhaps but I'm sure most aren't all they're cracked up to be. And aye, I still feel like I'm 21 and I look at people my age and think of them as "adults" thinking I'm still a young guy
Yeah, the important thing to remember about almost all high-profile "successful" people like Musk, Gates, Bezos et al is that they either had a privileged start in life, achieved their success by being c-units, or just got very, very, very lucky. There are countless "unsuccessful" individuals who didn't tick one of those boxes and you never hear about them because the stars didn't quite align for them. I think your kids are a fair bit younger than mine, so I would say that this does change a lot once your kids get a bit older. Doesn't necessarily become easier per se, just different, but I found that once my kids got a couple of years into primary school then life got infinitely more relaxed. Downside of that is acting as a full-time taxi service and social convenor, but I'd say I have a lot more free time now compared to when they were pre-schoolers. And while it undoubtedly is hard work, it's also incredibly rewarding, and even more so as they get more independent and you see them developing into amazing young people.
Whether it’s family connections, professional connections, or just plain being born into a shitton of money, they all got some kind of help. People like to talk about how Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of “college” (University to the rest of us) and still went on to be incredibly wealthy and successful. The crucial detail they miss out is that these people dropped out of Harvard. It currently costs $54,000 a year in tuition fees alone, if you want to live on campus you can expect to pay $82,000 a year.
BS. You did your best. You ain't starving and you're warm and fed. I know it becomes very very easy to over think everything at that age but really don't bother.
I've gone nowhere. I've done nothing of note. Everything I enjoyed in life is behind me. Likely never to return. I spent most of my 20s not wholly confident i'd make it to 30, and spent a decent chunk of my 30s wishing i hadn't. My epitaph, if anyone ever remembers me at all will be 'would have loved to, but couldn't afford it'. Ultimately... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Don;t ask me... I'm not here...
I've been meaning to reply to this for a while after mulling things over (and also to show that I do actually read people's replies here on Bit-Tech). Can't believe it was last year in November I wrote the OP! I find it interesting that folks tend to focus on the first point I raised (I should've achieved more). This one is something I've made peace with, as bluntly, as long as you're not being some arsehole and making someone else's life miserable, you're doing okay in my book. So yes, that does mean the average person is better than Putin, or Hams, etc. The second point (time is running out) is something I want to have more of a think about. Is there something I want to achieve? I have another thirty years or more to do something about that. However, I honestly don't know what that is. All I know is I don't want to arrive at my deathbed and think "ahh, bugger, I didn't leave the world a better place". The third point (is this it?) is probably the one that's bugging me the most. Perhaps my biggest regret is that I'm not going to see humanity spread to the stars and beyond - there's no doubt in my mind that we'll achieve this. But it also ties in with our evolution - as I said, when I was a child, I just assumed that as people grew older, their minds also continues to develop. But I'm finding fundamentally that I feel like the same person I was when I was about 16 or so. This also translates into disappointment when I see stuff like the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Gaza conflict: I mean, aren't we supposed to be more grown up than this? We're taught history in school, see the mistakes of the past and assume people learn from it. But then you get old and you see stuff that just, well, shouldn't be happening. For example, it's hard not to watch some of the parliamentary "debates" and think "are these people truly the best we have to offer? Because my friends are more mature than this.". That last part is a bit of a mishmash I suppose, but I hope you see what I'm getting at. A feeling of wanting to do better as a whole and wanting a next stage of adulthood, where things become clearer on how to proceed.
Point 2, Your time has always been running out, all of us only have a finite time, learn to accept death, hope it's quick and as pain free as possible. I think for me seeing a family member go down the dementia route from being a strong farmers wife to someone who can do nothing for herself, and now has to be fed, changed, bathed, everything has hardened me, I'd sooner focus on quality of life rather than length, so if I go out tomorrow, next week or in 10 years time I'm at peace with it. Point 3, Yes, yes it is. I'm in the same boat, forever questioning when will I be an adult, and now I'm fifty I'm of a mind that if it ain't happened yet it's unlikely too in the time I have left so I best just keep on keeping on and see what happens down the road.
