The thing that comes only with age is: to not give a fuck.
When we learn that it doesn’t matter we can all be little old people who are purple mohawk headed, wearing clashing neon adidas jumpsuit with zebra primted boas.
I only learned this a few weeks ago at 40 years old, now my hair is blue, both my ears are pierced and I’m a lot happier. I told my 19 year old daughter that “what will people think?” has been my mantra, now it’s “fuck 'em”
"at 20, you care the world what everyone thinks of you
At 40 you learn to not care what anyone thinks of you
At 60, you realize nobody has been thinking about you at all, the whole time."
If you quit worrying what people think of you, you’ll realize how seldom they do.
Hey, I’m you and you’re me! I also just turned 40 in late September. Happy belated birthday, ya old fart!
There’s always someone who will look at your life telling you you’re doing everything wrong. And you know what? That’s fine. It really doesn’t matter.
To just invest in broad index funds instead of trying to play the stock market.
So what you’re saying is I should HODL my Bored Ape NFTs?
/jk, broad stock & bond index funds are the way to go.
No no no, they’re saying buy more NTFs! They just need to be different apes so you can have a broad index of them!
:P
I did both. Mostly ETFs, then some companies I liked. I’m up 100% over seven or so years, but I do admit I got lucky on companies I liked. All EFTs are up a bunch, the safest way to go!
Hello fellow boglehead. Im happy i learned this at a young age, a long time ago.
The sunk cost fallacy is a very easy way to get stuck being miserable.
Sometimes a drastic change might be painful at the time but will be much better for you overall.
Definitely agree with this one
Brushing teeth regularly, and flossing , is more important than I ever realized.
I’m dreading the day my bad mouth hygiene will catch up to me… I know how bad it is but I still can’t get myself to brush every night.
Have you tried putting your toothbrush and toothpaste in the shower? I’ve struggled with brushing my whole life and this is the only thing I’ve ever tried that actually worked. I also put a brush and paste at every sink but the only time I can ever actually manage to brush is in the shower.
Brush whilst the water is heating up means you’re doing your bit to help the environment! And other such half truths I tell myself to get through the day.
If you’re like me, then some time in your thirties. I didn’t brush from early teens through until then - I had several abcesses and needed seven teeth removed, including my top fronts. Turns out I had undiagnosed autism, depression and low self image. Now I do brush, and it’s just a case of forcing myself to adapt to a routine. Even keeping some flouride mouthwash handy for a quick swill every now and then helps a bit. Hope you find your way.
I was like you, the transition was not easy, but what helped me was to brush my teeth when I already went to the bathroom to pee. This meant that I rarely brush my teeth at the same time. But I do it every night now. This also helped me reduce my snacking after 20:00. Because I didn’t want to snack after brushing my teeth. I convinced myself I was going to do this and ever since I only missed 2 nights. What also helped is using a tracking app where I could check it to “gameify” it.
It gets mighty expensive.
Man good dental hygiene is one of those things you just do not think about until you’re older. Flossing, interdental, mouth wash (before brushing), regularly visiting the hygienist and dentist. Your teeth evolved to last 35-ish years, the rest only happens from hygiene.
Mouthwash before brushing? Because you don’t rinse out the toothpaste?
Yes 100% that. I’ve never met a dentist who didn’t immediately tell me to rinse before brushing on hearing I used mouthwash; they all categorically said not to do it after brushing.
Well, that totally makes sense, thanks. I’ve been doing it the other way around for some reason
You can blame the Listerine ads for that.
I’m a perfectionist and I realized I’ve been making life too hard for myself. Choosing a low bar for success but keeping the ceiling high has felt like a much healthier approach.
The consultant’s proverb: done is better than perfect
Between a pragmatist and a perfectionist, one of them sleeps soundly and knows what he’s doing tomorrow.
“Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly” I try to remind myself, with a history of postponing things, and not wanting to imperfectly do things. Rarely I’ve regretted doing to my current ability, but countless times leaving things undone.
Yeah. I have several quotes on my desktop which I’ve written to try to counteract my perfectionism, and one of them is
- Live tomorrow’s plan, today.
And another one is
- Sign up now, cancel later.
People just don’t care about you that much, if you go into the street wearing nail polish as a a male presenting person no one will care if you don’t act weird about it. Same thing for shaving your legs.
Family might care though, what helped me was understanding that I spend a few days per year with my family maximum, but I spend that whole time with myself. So who cares what they think be yourself.
This helped me start transitioning at 19
I don’t want to transition. I am 100% male and this will not change, but I still wanna dress sometimes like a gothic queen. Will happen for Halloween.
But I still feel like people care. Even small changes on me get attention. I guess it depends if you learned lots of peoplr and friends in University or not.
I think when Learning new people, it might have an influence. But idk. I never tried it because I am afraid.
People will often take “I felt like it” or “I thought it looked cool” for an answer. Halloween crossdressing is normal, though yeah some people will wonder if you’re questioning your gender, it’s more because it’s a common safe way to express that and any concern is likely from a desire to help.
And for what it’s worth I’ve known many cis men who like nail polish. Especially as an expression of goth, punk, or emo aesthetics where adopting feminine expressions are seen as cool for guys to do.
“Fake it till you make it” doesn’t mean pretend to be happy until you are happy. I committed to a relationship I wasn’t happy in, a career I wasn’t happy in, and hobbies I wasn’t happy doing, all because I wanted the approval of others. A divorce, career change, and hobby swap made me much happier.
Yeah, fake it till you make it only applies to overcoming self doubt, and should not be used to dismiss glaring problems. It certaibly doesn’t work as a cure all for actual problems.
It can in rare cases work for happiness, but only if the reason is one that is just based on self doubt while things are actually going well.
Yeah, it’s about projecting confidence when you want something and you’re intimidated by it.
I was never going to “find myself” and so I should have just gone to college with my friends for computer science and made the good money when jobs were easier to get even though I had no interest at all in it. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that jazz. Now I’m a worthless schmuck in a factory living in someone’s garage paying their mortgage in rent prices.
All my interests are hobbies, some of them even too expensive for me to do lol they’re nothing you can monetize.
All my interests are hobbies, some of them even too expensive for me to do lol they’re nothing you can monetize.
Work is for making money, hobbies are for spending money. I think a lot of people mix that up and lose their enjoyment; money changes your perspective on why you’re doing something.
Take heart: had you done comp sci just for the money, you’d be where you are now. Comp sci isn’t for greedy people but for people who find it exciting and have no idea their career is timesheets. :-p
That’s so true. I studied Ba. Information Technology for two years in 2004-2005 and dropped out due to family reasons, then I went back 10 years later and did Ba. Software Engineering in 2013-2016.
In both instances, it was clear about half those enrolled in the programme were only in it for the money, you could tell that some people were just not excited about software. They were the ones who had dropped out by the end of first year.
The other lot were those who did find it exciting, but severely underestimated the difficulty of the discipline. These were the kind of people who have can edit game config files to add a bunch of mods to Skyrim, they consider themselves a tech wiz want to study to be a game developer. But they barely pass intro to Web programming with html and JS in the first year and fail the first oracle database course in second year. I had some good friends who failed out hard in second year of software engineering for that reason.
Yeah there’s an old saying in engineering school: “look to your left, look to your right. One of you will drop out, one will switch to a business major, and one of you will be an engineer.”
People who go into engineering and tech fields for the money rarely cut it. I love engineering and spend my last year contemplating dropping out to do sex work or something anything but the toll I was putting on my body and mind. If it was just a paycheck I wouldn’t’ve graduated.
The things that don’t kill you, do not always make you stronger, but leave you wounded forever.
When I was a little girl I thought that everything, all the abuse and neglect, it somehow made me… special. And I decided that one day I would write something that would make little girls like me feel less alone. And if I can’t write that book…
…if I don’t, that means that all the damage I got isn’t good damage, it’s just damage. I have gotten nothing out of it, and all those years I was miserable was for nothing. I could’ve been happy this whole time and written books about girl detectives and been cheerful and popular and had good parents, is that what you’re saying? What was it all for? - Diane Nguyen, BoJack Horseman, S06E10, “Good Damage”
You’re saying Kelly Clarkson lied?
Not just her, but also Nietzsche
Your high school diploma. Nobody ever asks for it. No job I have ever held has asked for proof that I completed high school which I didn’t. My last job had a class they wanted me to take at a night school and that’s when they realized I didn’t have it after 7 years of competent, exceptional work, so they just shrugged and got me in there anyways
Shit, I was able to get my GED to get in to college, didn’t complete, and get a job at one of the biggest tech companies on a prestigious project without completing either. But I was self taught and lived and breathed tech stuff to get there at 29 while the people with CS degrees were getting there at 22, so there’s a downside. But it’s just a piece of paper.
That it doesn’t matter what other people think of me as long as I’m happy.
It doesn’t matter what other people think, full stop. The world is full of people who think they know better. ignore them.
I think there’s a balance. if you really don’t care anymore, you’ll become a bad person that nobody wants around
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Any work or study done during an all-nighter is a waste.
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If you meet someone and all they do is talk about themselves, they won’t be a good friend.
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Nobody really cares how you look or what you wear. And anyone who does has bigger issues they would rather not deal with.
Any work or study done during an all-nighter is a waste.
Depends. I did some of my best work at this time (private project. not for my actual workplace).
I sense ADHD (source: am ADHD)
Maybe ;)
Same. That’s when everyone else goes to sleep and actually leaves you time to focus on your work.
Depends. When I was in art school, I regularly worked for 36 hours straight, and at least once for 72 hours straight. But it’s studio work, where you’re actually making a <<thing>>; it never would have worked to have been trying to read Marx/Engels or Hegel and expect to have any kind of comprehension.
Yeah engineering work on an all nighter is worse than not, but you gotta do what you gotta do and it’s physically there then.
Though writing for a classics class is the other area I’ve found all nighters to be acceptable. Though that was as a 19 year old on methylphenidate.
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Your own happiness is more important that somebody else’s happiness.
Not to say you shouldn’t be nice or help people, or invest in other people’s growth.
But don’t do it to the detriment of your own.
At 50 I learned I’d been tying my shoes wrong my entire life.
Welp, as long as they haven’t kept coming undone for those 50 years I guess it can’t have been that wrong…
Yep. Learned the first knot goes left over right in my 30s. Shoes fit better and don’t do that stupid thing where the laces face front to back.
My whole life has been a lie.
I’ve been wearing slip on shoes for so long idk if I could even tie a granny knot
real!!
You can just ask people out. You can just ask to kiss someone. I was in my mid 20s when someone told me the first one, and late 20s when someone told me the second one. Dating got a lot easier after each revelation.
You can just ask people out.
I know I can, but you think I dare do that?
You do it like this: Hey wanna go for a Japan trip with me?
No
To be fair, they didn’t say they would respond with a yes…
I agree with your comment in general, but it does depend entirely on the context and the situation. Eg, at work, you can’t just ask someone out. That’s a sure fire way to end up in front of HR.
Right, and you shouldn’t ask a married monogamous person out on a date, either. Never came up for me but is worth keeping in mind! A lot of guys seem to struggle with “she likes me bro she smiled at me” -> “my guy she’s the cashier at work she has to smile at customers.”
I had the biggest crush on a coworker, but I stick to this rule like it’s oxygen. I waited to ask her out until after we stopped working together. To my surprise, she said yes.
Nice job, well done.
