How lost were you in your 20s? What did you do to get to where you’re now?

14 comments

1. Never, really. Circumstances didn’t allow for it.

   Worked hard then work hard now, got lucky along the way.

   I definitely resonated with the feeling of wanting to skip to when the hard work part was over but honestly by the time it is you’ve acclimatised.

2. I wasn’t lost at all in my 20’s, I knew what I wanted out of life and I went and got it. Quite a lot of my mates were in a state of limbo for a lot of that time, but never took any action to find out what they did actually want to do. I spent a lot of it working, but I’m making the most of my 30’s because of it.

3. I was hyper focused in my 20s. Had a few irons in the fire, but always focused on career and family and moving forward and up.

   My thirties? An absolute cluster fuck. Like a monkey trying to fuck a doorknob. Marriage fell apart, career burned out, drinking to cope, just a decade of disaster. I’m now 41, going back to uni to get a degree in a field I love, working weekends and still have 50/50 custody of my kid.

   I’m not anywhere right now, but in a few years I can see myself being somewhere. It’s never too late to get your shit together and have another go.

4. I discovered computers. I focused on mastering them. Then I focused on selling those skills.

5. Wasn’t lost at all Just had no clue where I was, how I got there or where I need or want to go.

6. Was a super hard worker in my early 20s, realized we live in a system that rewards the worker bee mentality. Now I mostly just do my hobbies and chill. That’s all I want out of life, I don’t feel like working so I bot a bunch of runescape accounts and sell them for a few grand a month without having to really do anything. It’s a nice life.

7. I was not lost. I went from university to the army then, after a brief stint in an office, to the coastguard.

   My six months as an office drone was the closest I got to being lost, but I never seriously considered that bullshit as a long term endeavour. It was just a stopgap.

   I’ve always had a well-defined concept of who I am and what I should do. I was only really lost during the pandemic, when I had to leave the fire service due to ill health and didn’t have a back up plan in place yet.

8. Not really. I felt more lost in my late teens because I didn’t know what I wanted in life and I dropped out of a few schools. I started working when I was 19 and went to night school when I was 20. My early 20s were more about cleaning up the mess I made and getting things done. From my mid 20s the dust settled. Sometimes it feels that I really started living at 25

9. A lot of cocaine

10. i didn’t feel lost ever, i just kind of went with the flow. One day I said I don’t like this path im going on so i went to college got my degree a little later in life and went into accounting then finance

11. First half of my twenties were a dumpster fire. Didn’t try at university, drank all the time, and basically went from woman to woman with a lot of one night stands. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

    Then I got my shit together. Met my now wife, found a great job and found what I wanted to do. By 27 I was married with a kid and owned a home. So what did l do? I stopped drinking, stopped partying, and focused. Worked my ass off for the life I wanted.

12. I spent my 20s as a second shift Chef. I would wake up at 2pm then go work a 10 to 12 hour shift. After work I would go to whatever club or bar everyone was at that night. Back in bed before dawn.

    Around 25 years old I realised I was mixing vodka tonics for breakfast and the other chef on the line was keeping an 8 ball in his pocket at work. Around that time I was driving home as the sun was coming up after snorting some drug I had never tried before (found out later it was meth), and it hit me that I was going to die before 30 if I kept living like this.

    It took about 2 years to quit most of that lifestyle. By 28 I was fully clean and sober and out of production kitchens. I went the next 7 years without a single drug, pill or drop of alcohol.

    In my 30s I was lost. When you get sober you feel everything, face everything, mature quickly, search to regain your soul, all while fighting the urge to bury yourself back in that gutter.

    By 36 or 37 I really felt like I knew who I was. I am turning 45 in about a month and I am happier than I ever have been.

13. Not lost at all. I just kept doing what I found interesting.

14. Completely and it has only gotten worse