[andrewstellman]

I've known people who lived a life very similar to the one this person describes: moving from town to town, making art wherever they go, meeting new people, floating from relationship to relationship, not much money or stuff to their name, nothing really tying them down. The difference is that they were the sort of people who said "f_ck 'normal' society and its expectations" – an attitude that I don't see much these days – and, maybe as a result of that attitude, they were really happy people.

> I used to think I was the one who had it all figured out. Adventurous life in the city! Traveling the world! Making memories! Now I feel incredibly hollow. And foolish. How can I make a future for myself that I can get excited about out of these wasted years?

I hope she can learn to stop thinking about those years as wasted. She saw and did things that most people never get to see or do because they're too busy working. Plenty of 35-year-olds are in debt, upside-down on their houses, in miserable marriages, and just a few years from getting divorced, buying a convertible, and dating someone inappropriately young for them. More than a few of them would envy her life.