The thing that comes only with age is: to not give a fuck.
When we learn that it doesn’t matter we can all be little old people who are purple mohawk headed, wearing clashing neon adidas jumpsuit with zebra primted boas.
I only learned this a few weeks ago at 40 years old, now my hair is blue, both my ears are pierced and I’m a lot happier. I told my 19 year old daughter that “what will people think?” has been my mantra, now it’s “fuck 'em”
Hey, I’m you and you’re me! I also just turned 40 in late September. Happy belated birthday, ya old fart!
"at 20, you care the world what everyone thinks of you
At 40 you learn to not care what anyone thinks of you
At 60, you realize nobody has been thinking about you at all, the whole time."
There’s always someone who will look at your life telling you you’re doing everything wrong. And you know what? That’s fine. It really doesn’t matter.
The sunk cost fallacy is a very easy way to get stuck being miserable.
Sometimes a drastic change might be painful at the time but will be much better for you overall.
Brushing teeth regularly, and flossing , is more important than I ever realized.
I’m dreading the day my bad mouth hygiene will catch up to me… I know how bad it is but I still can’t get myself to brush every night.
If you’re like me, then some time in your thirties. I didn’t brush from early teens through until then - I had several abcesses and needed seven teeth removed, including my top fronts. Turns out I had undiagnosed autism, depression and low self image. Now I do brush, and it’s just a case of forcing myself to adapt to a routine. Even keeping some flouride mouthwash handy for a quick swill every now and then helps a bit. Hope you find your way.
To just invest in broad index funds instead of trying to play the stock market.
That I will never enjoy the taste of wine.
I figured out I would never like coffee in my teens, and had the same realization about beer in my 20s.
But it wasn’t until this year, in my mid-thirties, that I finally accepted that I don’t like the taste of wine and probably never will. After years of trying the full spectrum of wines, I had to admit that it wasn’t the “notes” that were turning me off, nor was it a problem with the quality of the wine. It was the fundamental “wine-ness” that I disliked, the same as I don’t like the “beer-ness” of beer or the “coffee-ness” of coffee.
Your high school diploma. Nobody ever asks for it. No job I have ever held has asked for proof that I completed high school which I didn’t. My last job had a class they wanted me to take at a night school and that’s when they realized I didn’t have it after 7 years of competent, exceptional work, so they just shrugged and got me in there anyways
Shit, I was able to get my GED to get in to college, didn’t complete, and get a job at one of the biggest tech companies on a prestigious project without completing either. But I was self taught and lived and breathed tech stuff to get there at 29 while the people with CS degrees were getting there at 22, so there’s a downside. But it’s just a piece of paper.
Basic necessities arent a given and one should b grateful for em
Grateful to who?
I think you can just be grateful to have or experience something. Like you can’t be grateful to anyone for a full moon, but you can be grateful that you saw it.
People just don’t care about you that much, if you go into the street wearing nail polish as a a male presenting person no one will care if you don’t act weird about it. Same thing for shaving your legs.
Family might care though, what helped me was understanding that I spend a few days per year with my family maximum, but I spend that whole time with myself. So who cares what they think be yourself.
This helped me start transitioning at 19
The things that don’t kill you, do not always make you stronger, but leave you wounded forever.
When I was a little girl I thought that everything, all the abuse and neglect, it somehow made me… special. And I decided that one day I would write something that would make little girls like me feel less alone. And if I can’t write that book…
…if I don’t, that means that all the damage I got isn’t good damage, it’s just damage. I have gotten nothing out of it, and all those years I was miserable was for nothing. I could’ve been happy this whole time and written books about girl detectives and been cheerful and popular and had good parents, is that what you’re saying? What was it all for? - Diane Nguyen, BoJack Horseman, S06E10, “Good Damage”
You’re saying Kelly Clarkson lied?
That I have moderately severe to severely severe ADHD and I’m on the autism spectrum.
Makes functioning as an adult quite difficult.
Knowing has helped me a bit, like “ok, I’m not a bad human, my brain is just weird”
If I had known when I was rather younger, I probably could have done much better in school, and would likely have been a bit more successful–in many ways–than I have been.
You can just ask people out. You can just ask to kiss someone. I was in my mid 20s when someone told me the first one, and late 20s when someone told me the second one. Dating got a lot easier after each revelation.
I agree with your comment in general, but it does depend entirely on the context and the situation. Eg, at work, you can’t just ask someone out. That’s a sure fire way to end up in front of HR.
Right, and you shouldn’t ask a married monogamous person out on a date, either. Never came up for me but is worth keeping in mind! A lot of guys seem to struggle with “she likes me bro she smiled at me” -> “my guy she’s the cashier at work she has to smile at customers.”
You can just ask people out.
I know I can, but you think I dare do that?
You do it like this: Hey wanna go for a Japan trip with me?
No
To be fair, they didn’t say they would respond with a yes…
Stoicism. The philosophical ideas of how to live a purposeful and good life.
The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday is a great beginner sampler, and/or a way to keep it in your life when you don’t have an appetite for the “heavy” stuff.
I’m a perfectionist and I realized I’ve been making life too hard for myself. Choosing a low bar for success but keeping the ceiling high has felt like a much healthier approach.
The consultant’s proverb: done is better than perfect
“Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly” I try to remind myself, with a history of postponing things, and not wanting to imperfectly do things. Rarely I’ve regretted doing to my current ability, but countless times leaving things undone.
Yeah. I have several quotes on my desktop which I’ve written to try to counteract my perfectionism, and one of them is
- Live tomorrow’s plan, today.
And another one is
- Sign up now, cancel later.
That you don’t put soap in the bootyhole
Wait what? Why?
Basically, soap is not intended for use on the internal part of your body, and will make your whole asshole burn like hell if you put even a bit of it inside…
I was never going to “find myself” and so I should have just gone to college with my friends for computer science and made the good money when jobs were easier to get even though I had no interest at all in it. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that jazz. Now I’m a worthless schmuck in a factory living in someone’s garage paying their mortgage in rent prices.
All my interests are hobbies, some of them even too expensive for me to do lol they’re nothing you can monetize.
Take heart: had you done comp sci just for the money, you’d be where you are now. Comp sci isn’t for people in for the money but for people who find it exciting and have no idea their career is timesheets. :-p
No, really: I saw a LOT of people flame out of the programme, and most of them admitted they were in it for the payday.
