Imagine if peoples advice was just “oh you’re 21? Life’s over, too late for a career change or self improvement. You’re finished”. Be wary of anyone who thinks they have it all figured out about the “correct” way to live.
“Never give up, never surrender.”
X is the new Y as long as X is in the same age group as the person peddling the false narrative. Truth is; you should have done it yesterday. It sucks that you squandered your time, but if you feel the same way tomorrow, you only have yourself to blame.
And this is why I left IT and became a mailman at 41. A life of dead-end support jobs wasn’t going to get me a six figure salary, let alone a pension. Now I have a genuine chance at a six figure salary and have enough time to build a somewhat decent enough pension if I play my cards right.
It’s never too late to turn things around, but the sooner you do it the better off you’ll be.
God I wish I could abandon my job for a better one but there’s no one out here caring for these people and if I leave it’ll be 300% harder for those I leave behind.
I wish there was good advice for people like me but “don’t have a heart” will never work. I’m going to wind up working caring for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities for pennies until one of them dies and I can’t take it anymore, and I pray by then I’ll still be young enough to find a job that can pay me enough to survive on in my old age.
“squandered” is entirely subjective.
I enjoy some success now in my late 30s because of the variety of learned experience from my 20s.
I made some mistakes I regret, and some mistakes that I value. And the same goes for my successes too.
Often there’s a lot of pressure to “achieve” something, but I’ve met people richer than me who love some of the cool stories i have from being dirt poor but scrappy, and know some minor celebrities who regret not being able to do some simple things without hassle any more, and life really is just being there having a good time if you can. At the end there’s no scoreboard, just whether the last few moments are painful or scary or not - but that’s everyone. If you enjoy it now you’re living better than not.
Seems nice