Wanted to be a heart surgeon when I was a kid. Gave up on that in high school when the anxiety hit and I started shaking any time I was even slightly stressed. Figured that wasn’t the career path for me.
I’m doing really well. Married, setting up to take over the family business with my partner. I still love heart-related medical stuff and read/watch things to scratch the itch.
Still anxious, still very shaky. I made the right choice.
Are you a cardiologist now? Anything you can say to scare nicotine addicts from smoking or vaping lol?
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So then get into robotic surgery. It takes all of the shakes out.
If that is the only reason you gave up then I’d say you fucked up.
My dream was to live in a log cabin in the wilderness somewhere in Canada.
I’ve then spent one year living that lifestyle, as a hunting and hiking guide in Northern BC.
After that I gave up that dream, or rather I realized all the downsides of it in the real world.Now I work as an IT sysadmin in Southern Germany, and am pretty happy with my life.
And I earn enough to retire in a log cabin in Canada, but with more comfort.I might be you in reverse.
Your childhood dream was to work as an IT Sysadmin in Southern Germany?
I was never particularly good at applying myself to anything, I blame the undiagnosed ADHD. But for the last few years I found that Im very interested in fitness, nutrition and exercise science. So I’m in the best shape of my life while approaching 40. Im also building a 4 bedroom family home with a mortgage I can afford and I have a stable career earning good money in a union protected government job.
So what if I’m not a race car driver.
Sounds like a golden opportunity to stealth in a race car bed frame to the master bedroom!
And if potential partners don’t like it? This guy/gal got a house, good secure job and fit AF - you ain’t doing any better!!!
Wouldnt have it if it werent for the wife… teamwork makes the dream work, once the house is built and we settle out all the finances I get to build a new fast toy.
I’m not really sure. I wanted to develop games, I left the idea behind because I needed income and at the time it wasn’t really an industry worth pursuing. Now it’s easier than ever to make games, but the market is oversaturated. Also my current industry is dying and I’m just kind of bored? So it’s going alright. Can’t say I regret it, can’t stay I’m happy either.
I really wanted a wife and kids. Once puberty hit, I had one goal, be the best father\husband I could be.
Put myself through college, got a good job, bought a house (specifically close to schools so they could just walk to school)… One problem… I’m clearly not attractive because everyone I dated in my 20s cheated on me. So I gave up. I’ve spent the last 10+ years having to constantly remind myself this. I hate it every day.
Look man, that’s a damn rough shake, but one thing worth considering is that people aren’t really done “growing up” until their mid 20s at best. It was probably a lot less that you weren’t the catch you thought you were and probably a lot more that you just got unlucky drew a lot of people who weren’t as ready for a relationship as you were.
Take it from me, job hunting was miserable for me, but it taught me an incredibly valuable lesson for myself. My worthiness has nothing to do with if people are rewarding me for the effort to be a worthy person. I had a perfect résumé, and gave a perfect interview, but I never got hired until I stopped barking up the tree I thought I was gonna spend my life climbing, because all the qualification in the world just isn’t gonna mean shit against pure bad luck, and it sounds like you sir had a whale’s load of bad luck.
If it’s been 10+ years since giving up, it might be time to start looking again. Stay the ever loving fuck away from online dating though, shit will retraumatize you in minutes, look for social events in your area that suit your personal hobbies and interests, but also, go looking for friends and not necessarily lovers, depending on your interests folks you find attractive might feel put upon if someone’s getting the moves on immediately after meeting them at a fun hobby thing.
Fun thing about friends to lovers is that if you realize it wouldn’t work romantically, you still got this cool friend person to do fun shit with!
I’m not sure you’re thinking of this in the most helpful way. A lot of times we are attracted to the kind of people that make us feel comfortable, and what makes us feel comfortable is what we have experience with. So for example if we have a toxic relationship with our parents, or with a first relationship, often we become attracted to people who embody similar toxicity. So its likely not that you are unattractive, but instead need to rethink why you have been attracted to the people who cheated on you. Maybe they all have attributes in common? Anyway, being cheated on sucks, and I’m sorry you have to deal with that.
Hugh Grant was married to supermodel goddess Elizabeth Hurley and cheated with Divine Brown.
Nobody thinks of Elizabeth Taylor and says, “Man, her husbands must have been so ugly! She divorced them all!”
Cheating has nothing to do with how you look. There are countless examples of people cheating with less-attractive options. As the poster above says, it’s about the type of person you’re currently drawn to/currently drawn to you (speaking from the same experience). If you’re up for a book and can overlook the cheesy-sounding title, check out Attached: The New Science of Adult Dating/Attachment by Amir Levine for some really helpful insights into that stuff. It was so spot-on for me years ago that I read it in a single night, just stayed up and finished it, because it hit so close to home.
At least you dated and had something. I’m doing way worse and I bet I’m older than you. And I never went to college either.
Aww dude.
Two chicks at the same time, man…
You answered the first part of the question.
Do you regret giving up on it or are you still hunting? We need answers, tell us, smotherpucker.
Sounds like someone’s got a case of the Mondays
I always wanted to be a biologist. I love nature, I find it beautiful and fascinating. I’m passionate about environmental protection, have been since I was a child. Studied, got my Master’s.
Finding work is so hard. What jobs you can get, are unstable, pay is ridiculously bad, and your values are constantly being ridiculed. The state of the environment is so depressing, and the future isn’t looking any brighter.
I don’t work in that field anymore (couldn’t afford to anymore…). The whole thing breaks my heart. I wish I didn’t care as much…
This post is sadder than some of the warnings we get the world is about to end.
I wanted to be a big shot IT guy with my own company. Started doing a bunch of plastic surgeon offices and hanging out with celebrities. I hated driving to the city at 6am and staying till 11pm, didn’t really enjoy the work, and just ended up in the socialite party crowd.
I left when the question “Do you want to go to the bathroom?” was ambiguous beteeen cocaine or a sexual advance. Neither of which ever appealed to me.
I disconnected from the field which included cutting orthodontal work half way through that I had exchanged for my expertise.
Drank heavily and even alone for a few months in the comedown and no longer drink at all.
Bouncers in the city will remember your name and let you into just about any club when they see you with a big name they want to get back. I remember walking into one place and it filled with Victoria’s Secret models out of nowhere. Got to hang with some playboy photographers and handle some hip-hop star interviews.
Some of the people I couldn’t figure out how they made their money ended up being nothing but glorified drug dealers, but their IT and SEO was top notch.
Don’t regret it, but don’t wish for it back.
I wanted to be a rock musician. Then I wanted to be an EDM artist. I still occasionally make music on my computer and even occasionally collaborate with friends who make music. I don’t have the same drive and energy that I did in my 20s to work on tracks late into the night, so it’s become pretty rare. I’m extremely proud of some of the tracks that I did over the years, so that’s enough for me. I’d like to keep pumping out music, but I just don’t have a ton of energy for it anymore.
TLDR: I got old and I’m ok with it.
Similar “dream” although, for me it was more just something I fell into for half a decade after highschool. I can’t imagine trying to keep up these days. I still know old producers and DJs. It’s not a stable way to age.
I had a similar dream too, but solved the aging problem by not expecting to live past 30. Here I am now pushing 60 and wondering wtf.
I came very close to solving the aging problem as you described. Ended up having to make huge changes in my thirties to avoid late admission to the 27 Club. Very happy I burned out of the scenes when I did.
Honestly convincing my dad is the hard part, he’s still pulling for me to be a tech wiz set for life with a developer job, but I haven’t written an original project since before the plague hit, and I haven’t had much real hope of beating the HR bot resume roulette wheel since before even that.
Now I’m wondering if I should try back for an IT cert in my management training or just lean into having been good enough at arithmetic and go for a cert in accounting to focus less on career ambitions and more on just having food on the table and putting my dream energy into something else outside of work hours.
To be brief, I am happier now than I ever have been in my entire life
I was a staff studio photographer doing jewelery work in the late 1980s. In NYC. If you are old enough to remember the Service Merchandise jewelery section, that was me. Lots of other upscale catalogs too. “Successful” in the business.
There were hundreds of people willing to do my job for free. Many were talented. So the pay was minimal. Tried other careers, landed in computer work in the early 90s. Got lucky with the rising tide. Rode it until now.
DO NOT REGRET. Photography is a lousy business. Now I own a house in the suburbs. Wife, kid, dog, car, 401k. Bills are on autopay.
I remember service merchandise
I wanted to be a vet when I was younger, and then I learned how emotionally draining the job is, and I dipped. I want to be a professional photographer but the things I like to take pictures of don’t exactly sell and I figured out that I should never make the things I enjoy doing my job because I will just grow to hate doing them.
If you like something but it doesn’t sell its a hobby.
DON’T MONETIZE YOUR HOBBIES!
There are people who do sell the kind of photos I enjoy taking, but they have way better set ups than me, and I just don’t have like 12k to drop to get the setup.
I totally agree with your statement. But, the thing is that I often don’t have time to do the things I like unless it’s my job. Certainly don’t have time to become good at it. I’m now trying to do the jobs I like and switch once it starts to become a grind. It’s usually about 5 or 6 years before it turns sour.
I got convinced to “be realistic” and accept a shitty life because achieving greatness is impossible. I regret it every day, being in an environment I don’t belong to, faking it because I need to survive somehow. The worst thing is once you stop “surfing the wave” (of your own thing whatever it is) it’s almost impossible to recover and get back on the track.
I’m 30 but I haven’t given up yet. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
