I had this thought after remembering one time that my DT (digital technologies) teacher at high school suggested that some of the class could try join a hacking competition. Nothing ever came of it, but I thought it was interesting at the time.
What’s really interesting is seeing the choices I made, and asking “what if I did the other thing”. Just off the top of my head, I could be still at uni doing research on maths or physics, I could be working on designing new robots for who knows what, or branching off even earlier, I could have been a doctor like my parents.
I’m only 24, so it seems like I might be a bit young for this kind of thinking, but there’s still a lot of things I could have done differently.
My two best friends growing up chose to branch off and get into heavy drugs. One died two years ago, the other just two weeks ago.
I always saw both of them as being so much smarter than I am.
It’s pretty lonely being wrong.
Smart people get sucked into addiction too.
Just wait until you get older, things that involve money get compounded, I made a decision at uni 2001 to not study ai, I decided bitcoin wasn’t worth it when that dude bought a pizza with it, bought a house too late and just before the financial crash. I did notice that bad shit was about to go down or at least the potential to at xmas 2019 with covid, not that there was much I could do about it. (Probably due to playing pandemic)
Most decisions in life are a gamble, and usually the odds are stacked massively against you, so don’t worry about it too much
It’s not weird to think about the other paths you could have gone down. But I would avoiding feeling too much regret. If something genuinely seems interesting to you, make it part of your current life, even just as a hobby or side project. Remembering that we are more than just our current selves is important for not getting swallowed by the grind.
If it’s feeling envy about the better life some alternate you has, try to keep in mind that nothing is simple. Although other choices might seem appealing in abstract, maybe they’d also lead to more problems. Sure, you could have been a doctor, but maybe the stress would have driven you to burnout and opiate addiction (69% of doctors misuse prescription substances).
I’d also say, that as I get older, I feel like I hit different “Save Points” that prevent to much regret. I chose to study philosophy instead of law, which means I’m a lot less rich than I might have been, but I would trade my weird, chilled friends from uni for the bunch of competitive over achievers I would have been “friends” with if I’d gone down that route. I met my spouse during a stressful period in my life, completing a degree for a profession I no longer work in. I could see that whole period of study as a complete waste of time, but if I’d never met the person I married the my life would be incomparably poorer.
Omg I ruminate on alt-timelines about decisions that weren’t even my own. Like the alt-timeline where I was never born, or never moved abroad, or if I got different classes, that maybe I didn’t get bullies, or like the alt-timeline where I left my country earlier and didn’t get to keep my multilingualism. Or like maybe I could do things differently at home so that my parents loved me more, or like tried to make more friends… etc…
I get it. I think that’s just brain.exe doing brain.exe things.
The worst part is those traumatic memories tho, I still remember one of those from like… a long time ago… been re-living that day for a long time. What if the outcome was worse? What if I never made it out of that situation alive?
So… yeah…
idk
OCD
CPTSD
🤷♂️
Welcome to the rest of your life. There’ll be a lot more of this.
“Well, son, a funny thing about regret is
That it’s better to regret something you have done
Than to regret something you haven’t done.”
"And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend
Would you be sure and tell herThis is definitely a shower thought. Good news, at 24 there is plenty of time to backtrack and reroute.
I’m a bit similar, I am only in my current career because I responded to an job ad email that was later rescinded.
I get that, but this wasn’t really a “look at the opportunities I’ve missed”, it was more of “huh, my life could have been completely different by now”. I like my job, I like my social life, and I have an amazing fiance that I’m marrying in less than 2 months. I don’t know what would be on my other paths, but I’m glad I chose this one.
There are some I’m glad i didn’t take. I started a degree in computer science in 2020, and I had plans to focus on machine learning research. If I hadn’t dropped it at the end of that year, I’d likely have finished my degree right at the start of the chat gpt shitshow.
I understand, I’m where I’m at by chance, and I wouldnt want to try a different path either. I did go down the robotics/compsci path, but didn’t end up in either of those fields, so you never know how things will end up.
