My dream was to live in a log cabin in the wilderness somewhere in Canada.
I’ve then spent one year living that lifestyle, as a hunting and hiking guide in Northern BC.
After that I gave up that dream, or rather I realized all the downsides of it in the real world.Now I work as an IT sysadmin in Southern Germany, and am pretty happy with my life.
And I earn enough to retire in a log cabin in Canada, but with more comfort.I might be you in reverse.
Your childhood dream was to work as an IT Sysadmin in Southern Germany?
To be brief, I am happier now than I ever have been in my entire life
Better. I’d rather work with reality than endlessly chase fantasies which I’ll never reach.
I’m 30 but I haven’t given up yet. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
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I have a few times in life, but I’ve always found a new one.
Each time I’d get deep enough into something, tech advancements always made that thing functionally obsolete.
Once again I’m watching my skill set being phased out, but am working on my big last hurrah project right now that I’ve dreamed of for years. Having a great time doing it, but have already started the process of replacing it over the next 18 months.
The one plus side now is that the company I’m with has already invested in my training for the next big thing. I’ve been through it enough times that I don’t feel like I’m losing something or wasted my time.
I was never particularly good at applying myself to anything, I blame the undiagnosed ADHD. But for the last few years I found that Im very interested in fitness, nutrition and exercise science. So I’m in the best shape of my life while approaching 40. Im also building a 4 bedroom family home with a mortgage I can afford and I have a stable career earning good money in a union protected government job.
So what if I’m not a race car driver.
Sounds like a golden opportunity to stealth in a race car bed frame to the master bedroom!
And if potential partners don’t like it? This guy/gal got a house, good secure job and fit AF - you ain’t doing any better!!!
Wouldnt have it if it werent for the wife… teamwork makes the dream work, once the house is built and we settle out all the finances I get to build a new fast toy.
I mean if you have monies you could get into spec miata racing. You’re in it for like $10k with car and track fees and stuff, but you don’t have to be a professional to compete and driving a gutted miata around a track is a lot of fun. Or go karts, though if you wanted to compete, the miata is cheaper.
Wanted to be a heart surgeon when I was a kid. Gave up on that in high school when the anxiety hit and I started shaking any time I was even slightly stressed. Figured that wasn’t the career path for me.
I’m doing really well. Married, setting up to take over the family business with my partner. I still love heart-related medical stuff and read/watch things to scratch the itch.
Still anxious, still very shaky. I made the right choice.
Are you a cardiologist now? Anything you can say to scare nicotine addicts from smoking or vaping lol?
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I’m manufacturing heart & lung support devices for a living. Look up the symptoms for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). It’s now the 4th most common cause of death worldwide (after cancer, strokes and coronary issues).
Basically, your lung dies a little bit over time, and loses its potential to remove CO2 from your blood. The biggest problem is the creeping progress. If you’re not running marathons regularly, you wouldn’t even notice if your lung capacity drops by 20%. 30, you’re a bit short of breath when climbing stairs. Most people would assume they are just unfit.
But once you hit 40% and notice something’s wrong, it’s almost too late. Mind you, that can take 10-15 years, and usually only starts in your 30s, so you’ll be 40-50 before noticeable symptoms begin.
But then the decline is increasing exponentially. You have trouble breathing - try sucking air through a wet tablecloth. That’s how strenuous breathing will be (no joke, try it!!!). Additionally, the amount of CO2 in your blood will change its pH value, making your blood slightly acidic. The acidity kills your kidneys and affects your liver, and also decreases the elasticity of your blood vessels, increasing the risk of organ damage even more, contributes to formation of brain aneurysms, and also increases the risk of strokes.
Think that’s all? Once your lung capacity is below 50%, you’ll need mechanical ventilation - permanently. So they’ll cut a hole into your airways and install one of those nifty adapters to hook you up to an oxygen bottle. Kinky, right? Comes with the downside of not being able to speak. And you’ll have to drag 30lbs of equipment behind you wherever you go… On top of being in a weakened state that hardly permits you to carry 10lbs.
Consequently, you’ll spend 95% of your remaining time on earth in bed, getting sores everywhere, needing help to take a shit for the rest of your life, all the while you can’t communicate properly, feel like being continuously choked, and hurting all over.
Fun times ahead? Smoking/vaping is the leading cause of COPD. You probably just didn’t hear about it because it’s not an imminent killer. Cancer or stroke have better PR.
Oh, and there’s no cure. You can’t restore dead tissue. With lots of luck and care you can stop the progress where you’re at. But you’ll never, ever, recover a single percent of lung capacity unless you get a transplant (and elderly smokers usually don’t make the cut…). And even if you did, transplant recipients often have a shortened lifespan due to complications resulting from the immunosuppressive medicine they have to take for the rest of their lives.
Good luck.
Friends of my parents, both smokers, had this. One died last year. Made it to 87 but only because he was rich. Rough last few years. His wife is doing better but still shaky.
mf overqualified
I do not have the knowledge to doubt your points here, but there are countless people who smoke and do not end up on artificial breathing apparatus in their later years.
I do not like being around smokers and understand it is not good for you, but your text here sounds very extreme.
Not everyone who smokes gets COPD. Just like not everyone gets lung cancer.
It’s just that you don’t know beforehand if you’ll end up as one of the lucky ones totally unaffected, so why gamble with your life?
So then get into robotic surgery. It takes all of the shakes out.
If that is the only reason you gave up then I’d say you fucked up.
I was a staff studio photographer doing jewelery work in the late 1980s. In NYC. If you are old enough to remember the Service Merchandise jewelery section, that was me. Lots of other upscale catalogs too. “Successful” in the business.
There were hundreds of people willing to do my job for free. Many were talented. So the pay was minimal. Tried other careers, landed in computer work in the early 90s. Got lucky with the rising tide. Rode it until now.
DO NOT REGRET. Photography is a lousy business. Now I own a house in the suburbs. Wife, kid, dog, car, 401k. Bills are on autopay.
I remember service merchandise
I wanted to be a story board artist. I wanted to work in Animation. I just never could get work (and to be fair, I’m not the best artist). It broke my heart. I regret choosing a creative field for school. My lack of talent and forethought is something I regret. I live with the reprocussions of that choice every day. I cried when I watch Arcane. Not because of the story, but I so wished I could have been apart of that quality of artistry. Now I’m doomed to the same job I wanted to avoid because that’s a I can do (customer service based). I’ve had multiple breakdowns since college and probably will until I die 😂
I didn’t think animation would be easy, or even fun, all the time. But I wonder nearly every day how it would of panned out if I made different choices, if I was smarter, more talented, more motivated, just a better human being. Since I’llikely be working until I die, I often think do “skipping” to the end.
As a random internet stranger I just wanted to say to keep hope and that I sincerely hope you’ll find your way. The past is the past, fortunately, and all you have is the now. I always found peace in the saying that we make choices with the information we have at the time and we are always doing our best. You can’t be angry at a past self that didn’t know. Also! Life doesn’t have to be grand to be worth living and your life is very worth living. Hope this doesn’t come off as patronizing because it’s not meant to be, the feelings you are talking about are familiar to me too.
But they are just feelings, and we can nurture them, be kind to ourselves, and, if we want to, slowly let them go.
I wanted to be a vet when I was younger, and then I learned how emotionally draining the job is, and I dipped. I want to be a professional photographer but the things I like to take pictures of don’t exactly sell and I figured out that I should never make the things I enjoy doing my job because I will just grow to hate doing them.
If you like something but it doesn’t sell its a hobby.
DON’T MONETIZE YOUR HOBBIES!
There are people who do sell the kind of photos I enjoy taking, but they have way better set ups than me, and I just don’t have like 12k to drop to get the setup.
I totally agree with your statement. But, the thing is that I often don’t have time to do the things I like unless it’s my job. Certainly don’t have time to become good at it. I’m now trying to do the jobs I like and switch once it starts to become a grind. It’s usually about 5 or 6 years before it turns sour.
I never found “the dream” qnd honestly
I dont know if i regret that more
I wanted to be a theoretical physicist. Somehow ended up running a small AI company. Money is nice but I still think of persuing my dream once I have enough saved up.
They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I said I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard.
Dang. Beaten to it.
It truly is a Fantastic quote.
Hire me let me work remote fulfill my dream 😂 I work in IT
I really wanted a wife and kids. Once puberty hit, I had one goal, be the best father\husband I could be.
Put myself through college, got a good job, bought a house (specifically close to schools so they could just walk to school)… One problem… I’m clearly not attractive because everyone I dated in my 20s cheated on me. So I gave up. I’ve spent the last 10+ years having to constantly remind myself this. I hate it every day.
Hugh Grant was married to supermodel goddess Elizabeth Hurley and cheated with Divine Brown.
Nobody thinks of Elizabeth Taylor and says, “Man, her husbands must have been so ugly! She divorced them all!”
Cheating has nothing to do with how you look. There are countless examples of people cheating with less-attractive options. As the poster above says, it’s about the type of person you’re currently drawn to/currently drawn to you (speaking from the same experience). If you’re up for a book and can overlook the cheesy-sounding title, check out Attached: The New Science of Adult Dating/Attachment by Amir Levine for some really helpful insights into that stuff. It was so spot-on for me years ago that I read it in a single night, just stayed up and finished it, because it hit so close to home.
I’m not sure you’re thinking of this in the most helpful way. A lot of times we are attracted to the kind of people that make us feel comfortable, and what makes us feel comfortable is what we have experience with. So for example if we have a toxic relationship with our parents, or with a first relationship, often we become attracted to people who embody similar toxicity. So its likely not that you are unattractive, but instead need to rethink why you have been attracted to the people who cheated on you. Maybe they all have attributes in common? Anyway, being cheated on sucks, and I’m sorry you have to deal with that.
Aww dude.
Look man, that’s a damn rough shake, but one thing worth considering is that people aren’t really done “growing up” until their mid 20s at best. It was probably a lot less that you weren’t the catch you thought you were and probably a lot more that you just got unlucky drew a lot of people who weren’t as ready for a relationship as you were.
Take it from me, job hunting was miserable for me, but it taught me an incredibly valuable lesson for myself. My worthiness has nothing to do with if people are rewarding me for the effort to be a worthy person. I had a perfect résumé, and gave a perfect interview, but I never got hired until I stopped barking up the tree I thought I was gonna spend my life climbing, because all the qualification in the world just isn’t gonna mean shit against pure bad luck, and it sounds like you sir had a whale’s load of bad luck.
If it’s been 10+ years since giving up, it might be time to start looking again. Stay the ever loving fuck away from online dating though, shit will retraumatize you in minutes, look for social events in your area that suit your personal hobbies and interests, but also, go looking for friends and not necessarily lovers, depending on your interests folks you find attractive might feel put upon if someone’s getting the moves on immediately after meeting them at a fun hobby thing.
Fun thing about friends to lovers is that if you realize it wouldn’t work romantically, you still got this cool friend person to do fun shit with!
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