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I think early 20s are a very powerful time for many people because naïveté can be quite convincing, and they have a lot of time to learn without unreasonable expectation. People will start looking more at your record than your potential, which is a shift from optimism to criticism in 99.9% of cases. In my case, I had what felt like a meteoric rise in the early part of my career, but technology changed, and my interests changed, and now all of that is irrelevant. So all that success you feel like you missed out on so far, it’s probably not much different either way, but you can’t replay it the same way. Maybe you’re talking about money, and lots of things can reset that too. That big tech co might take you, but increasingly for niche jobs not on the fast track. You can probably do a startup, but you might have to grind on your own for years while some kid gets his tweet funded. When you were young it seemed like the other way around because you only saw the top 0.01% of timelines ahead of you, and now it’s the same way looking back. Sound advice is the same, but you’ll keep learning that you should have followed it, and there was still time then, but now it’s too late, at least until now becomes then and there was still time. Maybe it sounds something like this: focus on the routine physical act of doing something you respect and enjoy enough to ignore the outcome, and just keep doing it. Or maybe just save your money. Actually don’t ask me; I don’t even know why I’m writing this. Okay, I do know why: because every other response is going to be some variant of suggestion to pretend that age doesn’t matter, and that your anxiety is totally unfounded. No. Things change. Opportunity is limited. Some doors are closing on you, and some you’ll learn were never open, but it sure feels good to think it’s all possible, and that’s slipping away. I regard dismissal of someone’s feelings as a nasty thing to do to someone, even if you’re just trying to help them, and even if you are rationally correcting them. You’re not wrong, but you’ll adapt and whether by rationality or necessity, correct your values to align with reality as it evolves. |