When Is It Too Late To Change Your Life Around?

[Tetragrammaton]

I think it's the fact I haven't done anything. I let opportunities and chances slip by out of fear. On one hand, I should have started writing or trying to work in film but I was afraid of college and the overall political/social landscape of the western artistic mediums and how I could make it in that. I thought writing comics with a more anime/manga influence was dumb because I was a westerner and it would be cringe so they'd never take off. I thought of a million excuses not to do one thing because of the million other things I wanted to do in life so I ultimately did nothing. That eats at me a little.
That would be okay though if I had some of the basic achievements of a lot of human beings. I've had sex and dated and shit, but it's been a while and I see the gap for me to find someone I care about or a decent friend group closing more and more. It doesn't help that I'm in one of the shittiest states in the country and am struggling to get out.

So it's overall a mixture of long term goals I never went after and not meeting the basic requirements of the hierarchy of needs and feeling like I mean nothing to this world. If I had a decent group of people around me OR was doing what I wanted in life, I'd be fine without having the other. But it's this mixture and knowing a chunk of it's my own fault that is leaning more towards being a gay ass doomer.

as many others have said its never too late until you are dead. do you know how many people in this world only got successful in life in their 40s and beyond? everyones life is different and trying to live up to what the expectations and timelines are for making something of your life is one of the dumbest things you can do.

i personally am still in my early 30s and my life has not gone the way i planned one bit things happened that derailed so much of what i had planned for myself to the point that i am still slowly recovering and moving forward. any time you feel like you are falling behind or that its too late just consider this. its not about what place you get in the race its about if you finish or not.

you might come in dead last but who cares at least you finished. its better than the people who just bitch about it being too hard and quit halfway or the people who just fall apart simply because they are not the best. as long as you are doing things you enjoy and are happy with your work what does it matter how late it is? life will always be as fulfilling as you allow it to be.

 

[1999 prick]

I honestly see life as a sequence of opportunities. where you gain something or lose something.

You obviously can't have everything in life so just being happy with what you have is more than enough.
if there is an opportunity to better yourself just take it, even if it takes forever.
if an opportunity where u lose something arises just don't forget what you have and where you are.

I am thankful for having a decent job and a loving family. not to get into too much I basically chose my personal faith and relationship over my family.
I still question my choice but even with my family's disapproval I still try to mend my relationship with them, even if I wont' be able to re-unite with my family I want to at least separate in good terms.

 

[Shart Attack]

Having a midlife crisis in your 20s or early 30s is neurotic. Reminds me of a former friend who had a similar crisis in her 20s and was later diagnosed, unsurprisingly, with generalized anxiety disorder. It was fucking up her life until she got a therapist. I'm not trying to be insulting when I say that perhaps you would benefit from talking to a therapist about this, not Kiwi Farms.

Look at it this way, here's how a couple of writers I enjoy started:

James Ellroy was a drunk and petty criminal who later finally found steady work as a golf caddy; he didn't publish his first book until he was 33 and didn't achieve mainstream success until he was nearly 40.

Thomas Harris was a local newspaper reporter who had one fairly successful book under his belt at 35 (Black Sunday) but only really broke out at 41 when Red Dragon was published.

Frank Herbert was in his 40s and living off his wife's salary prior to Dune being published.

It's never too late dude.

Raymond Chandler didn't start writing until his early 40s. Writing is one of the easier things to start doing later in life, because you have more life experience to draw upon.

Bro, just write something. Literally anything. National Novel Writing Month is coming up in November, which I've found is a fun way to write shit. It trains you to adhere to short-term writing goals and gets you over your mental blocks about writing, like that your first draft has to be a masterpiece or that it's some impossible task. Take the existential dread you feel looking at the state of the world and turn it into the setting of a NaNoWriMo book. It'll probably be shit, everyone's NaNoWriMo books are shit. But a shitty first draft is better than a masterpiece you never write. You can turn a shitty first draft into something better or call it practice for the next book. Bro, just write something.

 

[(((I am NOT a jew)))]

I'm not trying to be insulting when I say that perhaps you would benefit from talking to a therapist about this, not Kiwi Farms.

You have a point but I guess I appreciate this sites' input on things because there's no real filter most of the time. A lot of people here see the state of the world and are better at giving practical advice because this site studies the biggest human dumpster fires known to man. I feel like here as opposed to most sites, there's no lip service or false positivity, because there doesn't need to be. I know I'm mentally not all together but my few experiences with therapy have been mostly negative and I have very mixed feelings of SSRIs. I am neurotic to a point but part of me thinks I should probably be worried about my future, the future and not want to waste my life away. I think the problem with SSRIs are that they're usually a cope for not addressing the problem. If you've had a shitty life, no financial prospects and witnessed abuse, I don't think reacting to that negatively is clinical depression. Also therapy/medicine can be very expensive and I'm not at a place where I can do that.
You're absolutely not wrong though. I think watching the occasional black pill shit or even reading some of the stuff on here doesn't help matters much. It's just hard to retain faith sometimes and think things are going to work out when I see so much bad shit on the horizon.

Bro, just write something.

I actually plan to do a NaNoWriMo later this year. I've been writing more lately so at least that helps. Finding a way to get it discovered at all is probably going to be difficult but I am at least trying my hand at it more. At the end of the day I'm more of a visual guy so I want to do comics more than prose. Either medium has it's advantages though. Sometimes I love using the wordplay of prose so much more but at the end of the day I do think I write more towards a visual medium than a literate one, so balancing which one I should do sometimes becomes difficult.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

I worked with a guy who didn’t really hit his stride until his late 50s. Most people also just go with the flow in life and never have any real goals so to speak. You don’t have to be them.

Bro, just write something. Literally anything.

I agree. It’ll probably suck but then you write something else next and it should suck a little less and so on. Very rarely will someone knock it out of the park on the first try. You got decades to refine your writing skills. Just don’t be those fags who get extremely defensive about what they write, they’re the ones that don’t get better because they don’t think they have to.

 

[Fat Axl]

As long as you're still drawing breath it's not too late

 

[Gollum Grindset]

Never

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

I would say, in general, mid-40's is a sort of "passed the point of no return" if you haven't done anything with your life. At that point it is generally expected that you have something going for you. If you don't, it will always lead to the question of "What the fuck have you been doing up until now?" If you don't have a good answer, and you won't if you haven't done anything, people will just frown and turn their backs.

 

[Freya]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses

 

[Ultrapenguin]

Deciding that it's too late is a decision that someone will always regret, I believe.

You're 19 and decide your life is a wash because you're too screwed up, then you're 24 and decide it's too late but if only you'd started sooner, next thing you know you're 30 and realize you were an idiot for thinking that as a 24 year old, because you weren't that bad off, and chances are if you keep going you'll hit 40 and think about how you weren't so bad off when you were 30...getting into the mindset of it being too late so you may as well give up is going to do nothing but lead to an endless cycle of wasting your life, then regretting it.

Who even knows anymore. Let death tell you when it's too late.

I am neurotic to a point

You're extremely neurotic, I'm guessing way more so than you realize. I've read enough of your posts to know that.

A lot of that is less about life circumstances than health and mindset, but that's more than is appropriate for a forum post.

 

[(((I am NOT a jew)))]

You're extremely neurotic, I'm guessing way more so than you realize. I've read enough of your posts to know that.

A lot of that is less about life circumstances than health and mindset, but that's more than is appropriate for a forum post.

You're more than free to be honest.

 

[Claude Sigma]

It's never too late.
You're probably living in a small bubble telling you how "life should be" and how you should "reach this and that milestone by year X", but this isn't life. It certainly isn't the life you decided for yourself.
I've lived in a lot of different countries and met a lot of different people with different lifestyles, and I can tell you that there is no real wrong way to live.

It all comes down to what you think a meaningful life is.
If you think a meaningful life is having a 1 million dollar house in a big American city and you're condemned to exile to a monastery in the middle of nowhere, you will be very miserable.
If you think a meaningful life is having a modest life of reflection, worship and charity in a monastery and you're condemned to live a fast-pace lifestyle in a huge American city, you will be very miserable.

I've changed my life quite a bit over the years. Careers, countries, legal name, language, marital status, spirituality, etc. You can change however, whenever.

But before "changing", which is a chaotic action if you don't have a direction, you must establish a goal to orient yourself first. Just sit down, think about it, and decide what your goal is. Then go towards that. That's pretty much it. And if one day that goal changes (it most likely will, most people switch from career to family for example), then stop, think, reorient yourself, and start walking again.

 

[Apochrypha]

No matter how old you are you can always turn shit around. Never lose hope, hopelessness is a mind-killer.

I've felt the same as you. As of now, I too am a neurotic little freak in my early 20's with no discernible skills or life goals...but at the end of the day that's kind of expected for people as young as us. In fact, I'd wager that if you do know what you're doing, you're probably making the wrong decisions. I have come to realize in the short time I've been alive that the confusion, fear and immense self-loathing you feel is normal and it's a sign that you're growing as a person. You're going to have times when those feelings overwhelm you but as long as you don't let them control everything you do, you can make something of it.

Go out there and be a retard. You're 20's is really the only time you can get away with doing that.

 

[Shamefur Dispray]

I just went back in time with the Delorean and changed your past. You are welcome.



... I also might have made you gay as a troll... No need to thank me for that, the laughing I did is thanks enough.

 

[Lil Yappy]

I want to apologize to everyone for coming across as exceptional but it does weigh on me a bit sometimes. Luckily I'm really not doing too bad in life as I have been or some people. But there are people I look at and think it absolutely applies. With some though it may just be a character trait that stops them rather then age. Maybe it's not that you turn 25 and become a failure but you turn 30, are autistic and have such an air of entitlement that you might as well be gone.
I guess I love the movie Sideways because it's to me an accurate portrayal of how someone who probably has nothing to look forward to is and the feeling of malaise going through life letting chances pass you by. But yes, being in your mid 20s' feeling like life is over is probably a little fucking gay, I'll admit.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am a late bloomer in many ways so I have struggled with what you are talking about. My childhood was shitty and I didn't get a chance to build the skills I needed until I was well into my 20s.

Something I realized is that even if you never reach the top of what you want to do it's still worth it to keep trying to do it.

Like you aren't going to be LeBron James if you start playing basketball at 40 for sure but trying your best and having that passion is much healthier than giving up and watching TV for the rest of your life. Some old guys at the community sports complex playing a game every Saturday are still successful from the standpoint of being physically, mentally or socially healthier than someone who is just bitter and miserable because they gave up completely.

You mention writing and art which are actually things that don't depend on age. You can still be successful at them, and if you aren't then it's still mentally healthy to express yourself creatively.

Besides, this is the internet. There are tons of ways to put your art and writing out there and even make money from it. Just keep going.

 

[mold]

ok I haven't read the rest of the thread yet but I was instantly struck on reading your post with the revelation that what has gone wrong is that young men are being trained and educated by women, which is what leads to the idea you can "waste" your 20s and still turn it around. "No faggot, your 20s should be about scratching and clawing and doing everything in your godgiven power to achieve a higher place in life and get the basic aspects of adult life down" is true for *men* but it's devastating for women, what women do in our 20s is get knocked up and figure out how to deal with that. Then we raise those kids and start figuring shit out in our late 30s and 40s, and then we have a whole second life. It's a really healthy response for *women* to tell each other to chill about "losing" our 20s because we're not supposed to be active and striving then, we're just dealing with our biology. But it's absolute nuclear holocaust to tell young men that.

That said, you can recognize that you've really lost something but you can stop digging the hole. If you were missing a leg you could still be the best onelegged man you could be. Being under 50 in the West is for real like that, you absolutely did lose critical developmental experiences ,and you are fucked in some ways but that doesn't mean you should throw your life away and give up. You can still make things better for yourself and you can help build the world that comes next.

 

[Otterly]

You say in one of your posts that you let chances slip by out of fear, and that’s something that really resonates with me too. I was a very smart kid and afraid of failing. It took me a very long time to realise that failure is one part of a process, not an end in itself and I let a few really good chances go past becasue I was scared of failing, I will always regret that,
I’ll be honest, I’m still not there, I am still perfectionist and still afraid of failure. but I see the problem and it’s something I’m trying really hard to work with my kids on for their sake.
I make sure I talk about things in the light of ‘try it, fail? That’s fine what did you learn?’ We watch stuff like mark rober where it blows up or fails again and again then goes right. I point out that nothing complex works first time, you try and fail and that’s fine.
But it’s very hard to shake that mindset, however you’ve identified it, so that’s a big step. Why not promise yourself that the next time something comes up and you feel ‘I’ll only fail why bother’ you DO THE THING . And however hard you fail, you learn. Ok?
Second thing is ‘what’s time limited?’ You want to write a book? Ok you can write one tomorrow or when you’re sixty. But you want to have kids? That’s time limited. You want to climb K2? You’re not doing that when you’re seventy.
My advice to you would be
1. Go easy on yourself and stop beating yourself up.
2. Think about what your faults are - things like the afraid of failure (there’s quite a good book called ‘bounce’ by a bloke called Matthew syed. It’s short, read it. It’s about how most ability is practice.)
3. Think about what’s time limited. Family? Something physical or requires good eyesight? Or starting investments?
4. Think about short, medium and long term things you’d like to try. Which are easy to get going? Do one of them.
5. Next time you hear that voice saying you’ll fail, tell yourself you’ll try anyway and don’t beat yourself up if you do. Imagine you’re a parent and talking to a kid who is crying because they failed at something. What would you say to that child? Give yourself that same compassion.
6. You do not have to be perfect
7. Most people curate what they show in social media and a lot of people who insist their lives are great are lying.

 

[bliblblblbbllb]

"Is my whole life over because I've been so shit for so long?" is a common concern people talk with me about, due to my profession with the homeless. Most of these people have been homeless 10+ years and most have a situation where they've essentially burnt up 20+ years of their life.

It's true in a lot of cases you kinda have to cut your losses.
You went to college: you thought you were gonna be a hotshot engineer or a marine.... instead you had twenty years of addiction, now you're a fat type 2 diabetic with terrible skin, balding, thousands in debt, no friends who aren't still druggies, own nothing but the skin on your back and shitty clothes you got for free.... Your family hates you.... your old friends think you're dead and would be worse off if they knew the truth....

You can't make up for those twenty years, you can't replace them with a successful career and decades of networking and all the other lost opportunities. But if you're a homeless part-time cashier at McDonalds today, maybe you can become the full-time cashier at a union grocery store next month and make twice as much, with a nicer work environment and benefits, and get an apartment, and get some medical attention. And maybe you can go back and get a tech certification and eventually get a nicer job in the field you actually wanted to be in, and move out of the ghetto.

People don't need to be marines or hotshots to be happy and have fulfilling lives.
The social aspect of recovery is honestly more important imo.
Fixing yourself to not be an insufferable monster... if you're in good cahoots with a church or other community, if you have friends, and good health with all your basic AND next level needs taken care of, your past doesn't really matter. It just becomes something people beg you to write a book or inspirational movie script about.

---

If you're like 22 and just didn't get into the college you wanted or got fired from your first real job, or your first real breakup, developed an illness, etc.... Just get your head out of your ass. You have problems? That you realize are impeding your potential? That's called being a living human. And go listen to this video or read the text version in the description:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0xDtK3g3Q

I can't get the formatting to work because tor sorry.

This is the specific part of the summary that I find highly applicable:

Also, it is disgraceful for your soul to give up while your body is still going strong. As you age
the chances that you’re going to be the next protégé decrease, when young you may have
imagined yourself as a future savant, that you were going to turn pro, win the Olympics or
change the world with your discoveries. Don’t let the fact that all that never really panned out
dishearten you, you can still focus on building your character and on doing good in the world.


“Just because you’ve abandoned your hopes of becoming a great thinker or
scientist, don’t give up on attaining freedom, achieving humility, serving others,
obeying God”

And just as you accept the limits placed on your height, accept the limits placed on your life.
Death will eventually come for everyone, and fearing the future does nothing but stop us acting
bravely today.

 

[Otterly]

didn't get into the college you wanted or got fired from your first real job, or your first real breakup, developed an illness, etc.... Just get your head out of your ass.

This is excellent advice. And not just for the idea of resilience.
There’s also the fact that maybe what you see as a failure opens the door to something that’s actually good.
Maybe you’d have been hit by a bus on your first week in that college. Maybe in the worse college you’ll meet the love of your life. Maybe that first job would have led nowhere and the shitty one you got instead randomly opens a door, maybe you’re serving coffee to someone and mention you’re a writer and he’s a publisher.
I had my life change quite dramatically, mainly for the better, on the back of not getting the job I really wanted. I was devastated at the time becasue someone actively stopped me getting the job, rather than just not being good enough. But looking back it was a good thing.
Start writing, and work on the anxiety and going out. Maybe there’s some writing groups near you? Or online?

 

[CreamyHerman’s]

If you're attempting to cancel a website because you've gone total MATI, it might be too late